The growing threat from China

To understand the threat that China poses, one really does need to get some feel for what it is, why it is, and how deep and broad it is. Former director of operations and intelligence at Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, Nigel Inkster, writes in a New York Times opinion piece:

China Is Running Covert Operations That Could Seriously Overwhelm Us

The culture of the Chinese Communist Party has always had a clandestine nature. But as the party has become an even more dominant force in China since President Xi Jinping took power a decade ago, this has metastasized in state institutions. China can best be described as an intelligence state. The party views the business of acquiring and protecting secrets as an all-of-nation undertaking, to the point that rewards are offered to citizens for identifying possible spies and even schoolchildren are taught to recognize threats.

The West cannot fight fire with fire. Mobilizing government, society and economic and academic systems around competition with foreign foes the way China does would betray Western values. But leaders of democracies need to internalize the sea change that has taken place in China and ensure that engagement with Beijing is tempered by a hardheaded sense of reality.

The last state intelligence threat of comparable magnitude was posed by the Soviets. But the Soviet Union was isolated and impoverished. China’s successful economy, on the other hand, is a key engine of global growth, vastly increasing Beijing’s reach.

Barely visible on the world stage 30 years ago, China’s intelligence agencies are now powerful and well resourced. They are adept at exploiting the vulnerabilities of open societies and growing dependence on China’s economy to collect vast volumes of intelligence and data. Much of this takes place in the cyber domain, such as the 2015 hack of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, in which sensitive data on millions of federal employees was stolen. Chinese intelligence operatives also are present in state-owned enterprises, state media organizations and embassies and consulates. China’s consulate in Houston was closed by the Trump administration in 2020 after it served as a national hub for collecting high-tech intelligence.

But Chinese covert operations don’t stop there.

China’s Intelligence Law, which was enacted in 2017, required its citizens to assist intelligence agencies. But this legislation simply formalized a situation that had already been the norm. The wider China challenge comes from organizations and actors engaged in activities that may not conform to normal concepts of espionage. 

Much of this is organized by the United Front Work Department, a party organization that seeks to co-opt well-placed members of Chinese diaspora communities — and whose scope has been expanded under Mr. Xi. China also endeavors to entice other Western citizens. A textbook case, exposed this year, involved a British politician whose office received substantial funding from an ethnic Chinese lawyer who thereby gained access to the British political establishment. One Chinese approach is to patiently cultivate relationships with politicians at the city or community level who show potential to rise to even higher office. Another is known as elite capture, in which influential Western corporate or government figures are offered lucrative sinecures or business opportunities in return for advocating policies that jibe with Chinese interests.

For China, this work is about survival. Technology and business intelligence must be acquired to keep China’s economy growing fast enough to prevent social instability. Mr. Xi has stressed the need to adopt “asymmetrical” means to catch up to the West technologically.

China may be ahead of the game now, but there are tools that Western intelligence and security agencies can bring into play, including providing staff members with the requisite language skills and an awareness of China and the workings of the Chinese Communist Party. But they need help.

Liberal democracies cannot just play defense; political leaders must champion greater investment in offensive intelligence collection capabilities and outreach programs that educate businesses, political organizations and other potential targets about their vulnerabilities. Systems also are needed to assess the national security implications of what otherwise might just seem normal commercial activities by Chinese companies or non-Chinese entities acting as fronts for Beijing.

Western policymakers and intelligence services must innovate and adapt. But they also must ensure that strategies they employ honor the ideals of freedom, openness and lawfulness that pose the greatest threat to the Chinese party-state.

Inkster’s arguments that China needs to (1) steal Western technology to keep up, and (2) subvert democracy to maintain the dictatorship, feel spot on. Western democracies and technology really do pose threats to China’s economy and dictatorship.

Given America’s broken political system and the blatant anti-democratic autocracy that dominates the Republican Party, it does not seem that the US can deal competently with the threat. American radical right multi-millionaires and billionaires fund the GOP. In return for their funding, they demand and are getting weakened civil liberties and governments less able and/or willing to defend democracy. The ex-president was completely serious when he said this in 2018 about Xi Jinping after he became dictator for life in China:

“He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”

There you have it. The current leader of the Republican Party publicly wishing the US president had power for life. The GOP did not repudiate that, so they support it by silent complicity. That is similar to the GOP openly supporting and justifying the 1/6 coup attempt by still calling it “legitimate political discourse.”

Anyone who still believes that the Republican Party is a defender of democracy, the rule of law or civil liberties, is dead wrong on all three points. So dead wrong that their ludicrous false beliefs could kill a whole lot of us and put most of us in cruel Christian fundamentalist-capitalist authoritarian misery for the rest of our miserable lives.

It's official: Viktor Orban, the darling of the GOP and tyrants everywhere, killed democracy in Hungary

The AP writes:

European Union lawmakers on Thursday declared that Hungary has become “a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy” under the leadership of its nationalist government, and that its undermining of the bloc’s democratic values had taken Hungary out of the community of democracies.

In a resolution that passed 433-to-123 with 28 abstentions, the parliamentarians raised concerns about Hungary’s constitutional and electoral systems, judicial independence, possible corruption, public procurement irregularities, LGBTQ+ rights, as well as media, academic and religious freedoms.

Meanwhile, there are these interesting observations about democracy and what radical right autocrat billionaires want:

Today, a handful of billionaires fund far-right, anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, and/or ultra-nationalist political figures, movements, and alternative media personalities. Their aim is to push mainstream politics further to the right, as mainstream politicians fear losing voters to the new extreme parties. But how can elites get working people to support policies that are against their own interests? The answer is to divert them from the real causes of their misery—austerity, privatization, economic deregulation, and disinvestment, i.e., the very policies supported by billionaires—and, instead, play on their anger over immigrants and Islam.

In the US, concerns have been raised about President Trump’s affiliations with far-right hate groups and the political support he receives from those groups. Robert Mercer is a billionaire hedge fund manager and CEO of Renaissance Technologies. A Trump donor, Mercer worked with Trump’s short-lived strategist, Steve Bannon, to make Breitbart News a platform for the so-called alternative right, or “alt-right.”

Using Facebook, Cambridge Analytica also worked with employees of Palantir, a data-mapping company set up with CIA money and owned by a billionaire tech entrepreneur, the PayPal co-founder, Peter Thiel. Thiel has openly stated that democracy is incompatible with capitalism. Thiel was a big investor in Facebook and Reddit, the latter being a message board that worked “meme magic” to help boost Trump’s profile on social media.

Fascism and capitalism have an incestuous history. Capitalists want “strongmen” politicians who aren’t afraid to use violence to crush unions and make economies more appealing to international investors. US Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler (Ret.) testified that in 1933, following the Wall Street Crash of ’29, leaders of banking and industry plotted to install a fascist regime in the US rather than allow the New Deal social investment program. 

We don’t have fascism yet, but who knows where a heavily-funded, international far-right might end up?

Radical right billionaire Peter Thiel wrote this in 2009:

The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.

In the face of these realities, one would despair if one limited one’s horizon to the world of politics. I do not despair because I no longer believe that politics encompasses all possible futures of our world. In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called “social democracy.”

Those pesky libertarians. They want to completely do away with politics and government. As we all know, that would free up a lot of power. That power would not simply disappear. Where would it flow? Certainly not to regular people. Power would flow to ruthless, arrogant billionaire capitalist autocrats like Thiel and the elites who run the Republican Party and its Christian nationalism political movement. Those infallible people know what is best for us, even if it kills us.

Sounds to me like Thiel is, more or less, another totalitarian (or at least authoritarian), fundamentalist catastrophe just itching to get the power needed to fix what ails all of us, especially our civil liberties.

Q: Is it time to tax the hell out of billionaires, including ones who preserve their vast wealth in the form of tax exempt or privileged charities or foundations that last forever?[1] 

Is it time to get rid of all tax breaks for all charities and to eliminate non-profit status in tax law, i.e., what does the cost-benefit analysis look like (I suspect the costs far outweigh the benefits)?

Footnote: 

1. For example, the authoritarian, radical right Koch brothers foundation injects a lot of mischief into American politics. It will continue to do so for generations to come. American taxpayers heavily subsidize the very organization that wants to reduce them to serfs. Wikipedia comments:

The brothers have made significant financial contributions to both libertarian and conservative think tanks and, despite being ideologically libertarian,[6][7] they have donated primarily to Republican Party candidates running for office.[8] According to writer Eric Black, this funding doesn't stem from "a change of heart, but one of tactics" since libertarianism "was costly and could be bad for the family business long term.[8] David Koch who has described himself as a social liberal, had stated in 2012 that" I think the Republican Party has a great chance of being successful and that’s why I support it [...] The Libertarian Party is a great concept. I love the ideals, but it got too far off the deep end, and so I dropped out".[8] A network of like-minded donors organized by the Kochs pledged to spend $889 million from 2009–2016 and its infrastructure has been said by Politico to rival "that of the Republican National Committee."[9] They actively fund and support organizations that contribute significantly to Republican candidates, and in particular that lobby against efforts to expand government's role in health care and climate change mitigation[10] or promote climate change denial.[11][12][13][14][15] By 2010, they had donated more than $100 million to dozens of free-market and advocacy organizations.

Extremely disappointed Germaine keeps referring to bias news outlets like WAPO and NYTIMES

 No, not really 😏

But that is the world we live in now, where all media outlets are considered biased or promoting "fake news" when really a lot of us prefer sites that will confirm our already intrenched confirmation bias.

There is still a big diff between biased news, or biased opinion, and simply awful wackadoodle sources. 

I have seen Righties continually refer to Breitbart, Washington Examiner, or Newsmax for their sources. If you THINK that is bad, what about ZeroHedge, Epoch Times or fake medical sites like Mercola?

My take always has been: be critical, use more than one source, and don't be afraid of using factchecking sites.

Mind you, Rightwingers believe factchecking sites are themselves Left leaning.

On another political site I read this commentary and agree with it:

So, in a nutshell, I can understand not trusting CNN, or MSNBC, or some sources that are even to the Left of those two. THEY ARE BIASED. On occasion they get caught with their pants down, as happens to NYTimes and WAPO. BUT not nearly as often as Fox gets caught with their pants down. Yet neither CNN or FOX are among the worst "news and information" sites.

I did find a site that gives a more detailed account of how to recognize fake and biased news:

https://library.nwacc.edu/fakenews/what

Meanwhile I DO use Mediabiasfactcheck to check the sagacity of media sources, and Mediabiasfactcheck checks both Right and Left bias:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/

However, there is within Mediabiasfactcheck two categories that I pay particular attention to because the outlets listed on those two categories ARE typically Rightwing wacko outlets:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/conspiracy/

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fake-news/

Now, WHAT ABOUT Germaine's tendency to use Leftist news sources?? 😁

From the ‘Well, duh!’ files: The energy sector lied about its climate change efforts

The New York Times writes: 

Oil Executives Privately Contradicted Public Statements on Climate, Files Show

The documents, subpoenaed in a House investigation of climate disinformation, show company leaders contravening industry commitments.

Documents obtained by congressional investigators show that oil industry executives privately downplayed their companies’ own public messages about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and weakened industry-wide commitments to push for climate policies.

Internal Exxon documents show that the oil giant pressed an industry group, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, to remove language from a 2019 policy statement that “could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris Agreement goals.” The Paris Agreement is the landmark 2015 pact among nations of the world to avert catastrophic global warming. The statement’s final version didn’t mention Paris.

At Royal Dutch Shell, an October 2020 email sent by an employee, discussing talking points for Shell’s president for the United States, said that the company’s announcement of a pathway to “net zero” emissions — the point at which the world would no longer be pumping planet-warming gases into the atmosphere — “has nothing to do with our business plans.”

These and other documents, reviewed by The New York Times, come from a cache of hundreds of thousands of pages of corporate emails, memos and other files obtained under subpoena as part of an examination by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform into the fossil fuel industry’s efforts over the decades to mislead the public about its role in climate change, dismissing evidence that the burning of fossil fuels was driving an increase in global temperatures even as their own scientists warned of a clear link.  

On Thursday, the House committee is expected to discuss some of its early findings. “It’s well established that these companies actively misled the American public for decades about the risks of climate change,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California who spearheaded the investigation with Carolyn B. Maloney, the New York Democrat who leads the House committee. “The problem is that they continue to mislead,” Mr. Khanna said.

Well, duh! Exxon lied. What’s new? As usual, there are no legal ramifications for the lies and no mechanism for the public to receive reparations for the avoidable environmental damage and extinct species that carbon pollution caused. The NYT article includes emails indicating that oil executives treated climate change and heat waves as a joke. The oil industry just oozes callous arrogance about climate change damages and deaths. 

“Misled” is too weak a descriptor for what Exxon-Mobile and the others did to us. Like most or all other prominent Democrats, Mr. Khanna needs to up his rhetorical game to meets the needs of the moment.

America desperately needs meaningful regime change. Meaningful regime change definitely does not include the morally and legally corrupt and staunchly pro-pollution Republican Party.

Republican climate change deniers