Making Facts Fit The Narrative

Making Facts Fit The Narrative

A Review of Fareed Zakaria In Foreign Affairs

by

R.E. Prindle

Zakaria, Fareed: The New China Scare, Foreign Affairs, Jan-Feb 2020

Mr. Zakaria subtitles his screed:  Why America Shouldn’t Panic About Its Latest Challenger, that is, China.  My objection to Foreign Affairs, Mr. Zakaria and the whole Leftist-Liberal Establishment is that while professing to be far in advance than the Conservatives they cling to the whole post-WWII fantasy of American hegemony or supremacy.  That time is gone.  We are now living in a new Global era which is inter-locked economically while national sovereignty is taking a much diminished role.

Because of the shifting of whole national populations into the United States it is no longer possible, if it ever was, to speak of a unit called America.  America was a dream of the past.  Because of the extreme diversity of the US there is not one but several ethnic Americas.  The Chinese themselves already have a significant presence in the US and are inundating our neighbor to the North, Canada.  These domestic Chinese identify more with China than the US so it is not appropriate to speak of a China while disregarding its ex-pats in the rest of the world.  It is more or a Chinese diaspora and has to be dealt with as such.

Mr. Zakaria is himself a Moslem and in speaking of his ‘chosen’ country he speaks of it as an other and not as his own.  Thus in his subtitle he speaks that ‘America shouldn’t Panic.’  We, who have been born here, perhaps several generations ago, don’t recognize the China problem as panic, we recognize China as a competitor on the world stage that is seeking world dominance or, put another way, it wants to be the Top Country.  China being 90 some percent of the same ethnic group, Han Chinese doesn’t have the identity problem that the US does.  China does not cater to its minority peoples they dominate and subordinate them as with the Uigurs on its Eastern frontier.  Nor are they polite; they round the Uigurs up, put them in concentration camps and ‘indoctrinate’ them out of their ways, which are Moslem, into Chinese ways.  If Europe or the US would attempt that the world, including the Chinese, would put up a howl.  Yet if the West wants to maintain its culture it must ‘indoctrinate’ its minorities as the Chinese do.  Even the Hindus of India have belatedly become aware that their culture is under threat from the Moslems and repressive measures are being taken.

Let us be clear there is no China Scare in the US contrary to Mr. Zakarias assertion.  We are dealing with the new Global situation on a calm rational basis.

By a New China Scare Mr. Zakaria does not mean to refer to a second China scare, he is referencing the defensive measures taken against the Communist threat after WWI and WWII.  By ‘scare’ he means an irrational response to an imaginary threat.  Thus he tries to force the facts to fit his narrative. 

In point of fact there was a Communist threat that had to be quelled.  After WWI the alert and astute Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer rose to the occasion rounding the Communists up and actually deporting a few hundred to the Socialist Homeland, the Soviet Union.  His efforts were compromised by the Domestic Reds in prominent positions.

After WWII HUAC rose to the occasion abetted by 1950 with the activities of the courageous Senator Joseph McCarthy who also were defeated by internal Communist forces, but the Communist momentum was derailed after both wars and forced to reorganize.

Now, Zakaria follows the official CIA line in which ignorant American fears dominate their actions.  Thus they say that in both the aftermath of WWI and WWII there were no Communist threats and the effective responses to defuse those threats were merely panic attacks.  While our great generals had won the wars and our brave American soldiers had outfought their terrible enemies immediately on arriving home they had panic attacks rather than recognizing enemy tactics.  In WWI Mitchell Palmer who acted so magnificently has been defamed as a paranoid dodo.

After WWII Pres. Truman’s actions are characterized this way by Zakaria following the CFR playbook:

In February 1947, US President Harry Truman huddled with his most senior policy advisors, George Marshall, and Dean Acheson and a handful of Congressional leaders.  The topic was the administration’s plan to aid the Greek government in the fight (scary response in Mr. Zakaria’s thought processes) against a Communist insurgency.  Marshall and Acheson presented their case for the plan.  Arthur Vandenberg, chair of the Senate Committee On Foreign Relations, listened closely and then offered his support with a caveat.  “The only way you are going to get what you want,” he reportedly told the president, “is to make a speech and scare the hell out of the country.”

Now, one might say that Pres. Truman, acting in his capacity and duty as the President, presented his speech to alert the country to the threat of World Communist domination which was real and imminent at the time having been encouraged by the Communist sympathizer former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who Vice President Truman succeeded after having been purposely kept ignorant of the world situation even though Roosevelt was obviously a sick and dying man.

Zakaria says that Pres. Truman was not rational but an irrational scare tactician manipulating the country to get what he wanted.  Zakaria could have co-written Howard Zinn’s trashy history.  This is the way that the Left discredits by insinuation and defamatory characterization ignoring the facts.

Mr. Zakaria continues:

Over the next few months, Truman did just that.  He turned the civil war in Greece into a test of the United States ability to confront international communism.

You see how Zakaria turns the situation from an internationally communist backed insurgency into a civil war, and instead of an international defense against the spread of communism into an ego test of the United States ability to confront international communism.  Obviously Truman and the US was at fault and not Joseph Stalin and international communism.  Thus we go from a communist insurgency to a civil war, to a ‘test’ against international communism.  This says something as to why the CFR would allow such trash in their magazine.

Quote:  (note the language)

Reflecting on Truman’s expansive rhetoric about aiding democracies anywhere, anytime, Acheson confessed in his memoirs that the administration had made an argument “clearer than truth.”  Something similar is happening today in the American debate about China.

Unquote.

Not the negative characterization of the phrase ‘Truman’s expansive rhetoric about aiding democracies anytime, anywhere’ and Acheson ‘confessed.’  Did he really confess or merely state what might have been an obvious truth to him.  And his ‘clearer than truth’ may be meant positively rather than negatively.  It can possibly be read both ways but Zakaria make Acheson ‘confess’ which is negative.  This is the Leftist way.

Perhaps English is Mr. Zakaria’s second language while Arabic is his first. Oh, I know, I know, even though Mr. Zakaria is a Moslem he is as ‘American’ as apple pie.  He may even have been born here, right?

Mr. Zakaria says that similar to the ‘Red Scares’ is happening today  in the American debate about China.  Not true, there is nothing similar at all.  This is a different time, different circumstances and a different grope for power.  What Americans should panic about is Mr. Zakaria’s being given space to spin his anti-American vitriol.  Would it be out of line to ask from which university Mr. Zakaria received his degree in history?

Humor In The News

Humor In The News

by

R.E. Prindle

 

This is the funniest news paragraph I’ve read in a very long time.  From The WSJ 9/14/19 headline:  China Waives Tariffs On U.S. Farm Goods.

 

China will exempt purchases on U.S. soybeans, pork and other agricultural products from punitive tariffs, in a move that appears aimed at addressing one of President Trump’s demands during the protracted trade war

Oops.  China can’t feed itself.  They require US soybeans, pork and other essentials that they can’t provide for themselves.  Oops.  They think they’re doing the US a favor by removing ‘punitive’ tariffs. Not at all.  What they are doing is demanding that the US provide them with food essentials. Begging even.   How hilarious this is.

What President Trump should say is that no, no, if you want us to feed you then you must provide us with an incentive and that is this and this and this and this.  Then, no problem, we are shaking hands.  The very idea that the Chinese are caving to US demands!  How can I or anyone else stop laughing.  Concede or starve China.  What about those other sources from whom you were going to buy?  Well, what about them?

And my message to leeching US farmers is this.  The Pres. Has put you in the driver’s seat.  You can expect no more problems from the Chinese.  Now that you can recoup every dime you temporarily lost from China you can repay the American people every goddamn billion you extorted from us in your anguish.  Give that money back.  We need it.  You have been compensated and how.

Are America And China

Trading Friends Or Enemies?

by

R.E. Prindle

 

We’ve got a new flap concerning old grievances.  The Sunday (7/25/19) New York Times, our arbiter on which news is fit to print and which isn’t, has published a front page article condemning Pres. Trump’s recent tweet encouraging US companies to move back to the US.  The Times is outraged that anyone would consider China an enemy, that is pursuing purely Chinese goals at everyone else’s expense.  In some circles such self-centeredness would be considered aggression but not the NYT.

For decades now Americans have been complaining about the lack of transparency in governmental decisions.  Heck, Obama even ran as a transparent candidate but then reneged immediately on election.  We have it now.  Pres. Trump is so transparent that he tweets his goals and objectives on a daily basis in the what the NYT derogatively designates as ‘tweet storms.’

I guess there’s transparency and then there’s transparency.  There’s a good transparency and a bad transparency.  We’ve never seen the former and now that we have the latter we’ll have to accept that as a step forward.

At any rate, what is clear to everyone not a Liberal is that China has been taking advantage of America’s good will for decades and the Pres. wants to stop it.  Hence, he has ‘ordered’ US companies to begin laying the foundations for a return to America’s ‘welcoming shores.’

The NYT disagrees with this affirmative action as it is so wedded to the China First policies of the last seventy years.  It would be too costly and impossible for such a return to take place, they say.  They point out the Chinese plants would have to be abandoned and that would be an outrageous financial burden. (It would also be the first time they considered the welfare of businesses.)  One tires of pointing out the contradictions of Liberal thought but one must ask why abandoning vast US factories to establish themselves in China was not an intolerable financial burden on companies?  Why are these millions of vacated acres and rusting plants in the US not a symbol of something?  One also has to ask what dog does the NYT have in this matter?  We all know that Mexican money is propping up the NYT propaganda factory; how much are they getting from China?

The Pres. does have the authority, if for nothing else, to encourage the companies to re-establish  in the US.  In any event building the infra structure would take some time, longer or shorter depending on the industry, reestablishing pipelines etc.

But that fabulous propaganda machine, the NYT, that can’t do advocate, says it can’t be done.  Transferring businesses only works from West to East but the earth’s rotation, apparently, precludes East to West.

One is reminded of that old saw of Louis XIV or Jack Kennedy, take your choice, about planting the tree that takes a hundred years to mature.  To  overrule the gardener, one the other or both are said to have excitedly ejaculated:  My goodness, get it in the ground right away we have no time to lose.

Same situation here.  Get moving.

How A Global Trading System Dies

How A Global Trading System Dies

by

R. E. Prindle

 

My title is one of the two slogans on the cover of the September/October issue of the CFR’s Foreign Affairs magazine.  As it is the CFR that can only mean the Council is lamenting the termination of the Chinese uncontested domination of manufacturing and distribution in both Europe and North America.

Of course nothing is more natural or desirable than change.  During the Obama administration when the whole of American mores were forcefully being changed change was good.  Now that President Trump is reorganizing the CFR trading system out of favoring China change is lamentable.  The unfair Chinese system was thought perfect by the CFR.

Strangely, in reading the articles in Foreign Affairs there seems to be a cognitive disconnect about what happened.  The Chinese did not originate the Chinese Trading System to which the CFR alludes, the US did.  The Chinese didn’t have an inkling of an idea of establishing a global trading system.  The country was quite insular and seemingly content to stay that way.

Then in 1971 Nixon and Kissinger traveled to China, groveling before Mao in his nighties and changed the successful old system of Chinese containment releasing the genie from the bottle.

Then Americans, always ready to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage, saw that the Chinese would work hard for virtually nothing so they took their expertise and exported it to China free of any charges to show them how to make gidgets and gadgets for simple minded Americans and so to be able to eventually conquer the world without munitions or armies of any sort but by simply manufacturing gidgets and gadgets.

Not being complete idiots the Chinese studied American history during the nineteenth century and learn that by merely using intellectual properties without paying for them was a royal road to riches and by excluding competition from American goods and restricting outside investments to exclude the very corporation who were exploiting cheap Chinese labor, stealing trade and manufacturing secrets that all the apples on the tree would fall in China.

Speaking of apples, here is an example of the peculiar trading system the CFR so adores.  At one time Washington State was shipping whole crops of apples to China and prospering mightily.  The bureaucrats in DC, mostly CFR members considerately thought this matter over and, apparently thinking it unfair that American growers should be prospering they ordered the Washington State growers to go to China and teach them how to grow apples commercially themselves.  You see, the Chinese couldn’t figure that one out themselves.  Consequently Washington State growers lost that lucrative market.

And in that vein the CFR bureaucrats organized their amazing global trading system whose demise they now deplore.  The opinion of the apple growers hasn’t been solicited.

This incredibly unfair, even criminal, approach to global trade is now dying a natural death.  No, correct that, President Trump is blowing it apart.  As Chinese intransigence hardens into a total refusal to give up their advantages conferred on them by the CFR, President Trump, who’d rather win than lose, is hardening the US approach.  In the latest development he is apparently assuming an autocratic stance more consonant with global political trends and has or is about to order US corporations to abandon China and bring their manufacturing back to the US.

Such a ukase would be the worst thing that could happen to China that, after all, has built its prosperity by exploiting the people of the US and Europe.

Not only is a global trading system dying but the whole post-French Revolution democratic political system is dying.  Democracy is dead as autocracy rises from the ruins of the pre-Soviet Revolution Czarist autocratic system.  Today, change is now.  Rather than resist the current, let’s go with the flow.

The Total End Of MSM Credibility

The Total End

Of MSM Credibility

by

R.E. Prindle

 

Not only has Faux News been hi-jacked by Leftist commandoes, it appears that the Wall Street Journal has too.  In the weekend (7/10-11/19) issue the paper has devoted a full two page article by one Clint Watts to ‘Our New Terrorism Problem’ followed by ‘lethal white supremacist attack.’

While we might think that Clint Watts is just another Leftist loony he has somehow acquired impressive sounding creds.  Get this:

 

Mr. Watts is distinguished research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the author of “Messing With The Enemy:  Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians and Fake News,” [Stop that laughing this is serious business.] published by Harper (which like the Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp.).  He is a former FBI special agent and a former executive officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

I’m always suspicious of ‘distinguished fellows.  Bomber Billy Ayers of the Weathermen was a ‘distinguished professor’ at UIIlinois.   And note News Corp own the WSJ and Harpers while publishing Watt’s book.

 

In fact the formula for responding to ‘America’s white supremacist terrorists emergency’ is quite clear- because of our hard won experience in fighting jihadists from Al Qaeda and its spawn, Islamic State we must swiftly and carefully apply the best practices of the two decades since 9/11/2001 to counter this decade’s domestic terrorist threat by passing new laws, increasing resources and enhancing investigators capabilities.

What sort of hot house steam room are this guy and his fellows living in?  There is no White Supremacist threat.  In a country filled with revolutionary Moslems, Mexican revanchists, Chinese expansionists and what have you this noodlehead thinks that a non-existent White Supremacist organization is a major threat that pushes all other concerns aside and needs more legal erosion of our rights, spending more vast sums of money and heavier surveillance of no one knows whom while foreign terrorists are given a free hand, free from any suspicion, and their anti-American operations funded by the US government.  Politicians tremble in fear of being called racist by their enemies so they wage war against Americans.  Is anyone paying attention to this nonsense?

Watts has a seriously compromised intelligence.  Has he heard of the Democrats’ suicide contingent and its large and well funded and armed paramilitary outfit called antifa for which the police authorities are not to interfere in their criminal activities - that they are to stand down and watch antifa destroy property and brutalize people?  They say interfering will only make the problem worse?

And the Wall Street Journal has the audacity to endorse and publish Watts’ bushwa?  Good god almighty.

I do not hesitate to say that Watts and the WSJ are so stupid that Watts can say and the WSJ  publishing this:

Lacking any centralized leadership white supremacist terrorism overwhelming involves the online self-radicalization of isolated young men.  As a result, there is no terrorist headquarters to discover and target.

Now, Watts has just compared the non-existent White Supremacist threat of isolated, self-educated on the internet men with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State that has headquarters that can be located and multiple nodes that can be activated as headquarters if one is destroyed and unlimited funding, as does antifa by the way, into the hundreds of billions if not trillions, much of it which has been provided by the US government itself under Obama, one hundred and fifty billion at one swipe, and these Moslem military units remain undefeated  to this day, twenty years on but a few self-educated  so-called White Supremacists  with neither organization nor money are an emergency?

Watts has no credibility and I might add the WSJ has sacrificed theirs by publishing this bilious crap.

Now, who owns New Corp and what is their background?

WSJ- Wooing China To Drop Tariffs.

A Review:

WSJ-Wooing China To Drop Tariffs

by

R.E. Prindle

 

Today (4/5/17) we learn in the Journal that China places tariffs of double digits on US goods.  President Trump has been cursed for not being a Free Trader and the quaking shaking Libs wobble around in circles at the mention of the word tariff.  But now, according to Bill Lane, of Caterpillar, who wrote the article, the Pres. Is going to entertain Chinese bigwigs at Mar-a-Lago and ‘woo’ them to drop their tariffs.

So, now we belatedly learn what has been concealed, the Chinese have never been Free Traders, just free loaders exploiting the US and Europe.  The story goes further than Bill and the WSJ do as they don’t delve any deeper.  As Niall Ferguson pointed out in an article the Chinese threw up a firewall against US technology companies so that they wouldn’t dominate China while the Chinese studied the internet and stole whatever information they needed to create their own search engine, Baidu, and mimic and master the social media.  That done you and I can now download Baidu but the Chinese are unable to ‘Google it’.  Rah, rah, rah, Free Trade.

So, now that Bill and the WSJ realize they’ve been walking around with something stiff and yellow up their backsides for years they’re beginning to feel the discomfort.  After decades of that they’re going to attempt to solve the problem bass ackwards.  They’re encouraging the Pres. To ‘woo’, understand the word woo, China into dropping its tariffs rather than doing the muscular thing and impose tariffs on the Chinese and kick their asses in line.

Ah, but the Libs say that will wreck the Global Free Trade system, but, there isn’t a Free Trade system as China has amply demonstrated.  So, what did China achieve by imposing double digit tariffs?  They built up their economy quickly and at the expense of a Global Free Trade system.  We in effect paid them to do business with them.

So, what will happen if the US imposes double digit tariffs on Chinese goods?  China will be forced to develop their own internal economy while the US will quickly rebuild its own economy.   Will that mean goods will no longer be cheap?  Why?  As the Libs never tire of saying, robots are doing the work so there won’t be any jobs.

Well, if the Chinese are turning to robots because robots are the cheapest to run even more cheaply than cheap Chinese labor then goods can be made as cheaply here at the same cost that is as in China.  Imagine the transportation costs that will be saved making our domestic goods even cheaper.

Mr. Bill concludes his argument thusly:  Maybe this is the right time for the two leaders to cut a deal to slash Chinese trade barriers.

Chinese trade barriers?  Why weren’t Chinese trade barriers a major topic during the election?  Why are we only hearing of Chinese trade barriers now?  Maybe Chinese trade barriers didn’t and don’t fit the so-called Free Trade system?  Then we have nothing to lose.

Face it Libs:  We’ve been had since that dolt Nixon opened to China.  It is time for China to play by the same rules the Free Traders are playing by to get a little of our own back.

I just hope the Pres. turns aggressive and stops the defensive cowtowing to those East Coast Libs and pays more attention to the people who elected him.  Figure it out Mr. Pres. they would have loved to have burned you at the stake back then and it would gratify them much to see you in flames now.  Stop trying to placate them and kick them into place.

Trump Puts China On Notice

Trump Puts China On Notice

by

R.E. Prindle

Trump Puts China On Notice

by

R.E. Prindle 

Soon to be President of the United States Donald Trump today had a conversation with the president of Taiwan.  Astonishingly it appears that China pretends to dictate to the President of the United States with whom he can or cannot have conversations.  They reprimand the President of the US for speaking without permission.  China makes a major issue of what our own media calls a gaffe.  It is true that China now owns huge chunks of US territory through purchase including an evident takeover of the film industry in Hollywood but at last count the US was a sovereign nation, notwithstanding the attitude of the media, in charge of its own affairs.

The pansies, I almost said pussies, of the US media evidently went Code Red in a state of hysterical alarm over the conversation.  Oh my god, Trump, they said, has already jeopardized US-China relations.  Good! I say, and this is just the beginning.  China must alter its trade relations with the US removing the many obstacles to free trade, which everyone purportedly highly prizes, with our people without and within China.

China, for instance, refuses to allow our companies to operate unimpeded within China.  Ridiculous laws require US companies to surrender controlling interest in intra-China operations while the arrogant Chinese expect to own and operate US operating with no restrictions.

They are alarmed because Trump had a conversation with the President of Taiwan?  Well, be prepared to be deeply offended when Trump begins trade negotiations.  Things are going to change China boys.  The gold rush is over lads and the bum’s rush is on unless you adopt reciprocal conditions.  We will own huge chunks of China and operate freely with no restrictions wholly owned subsidiaries. 

You are not talking to wussies like Nixon and Kissinger now.  The gravy train doesn’t start from here anymore.