Tag: Inequality

French President Macron backs NATO war drive against Russia

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

French President Macron backs NATO war drive against Russia

Examining Macron’s speech also reveals the explosive internal class conflicts the NATO powers are seeking to suppress with the war drive against Russia. Already before the war, strikes and protests were mounting against rising inflation and the policies of mass infection with COVID-19 pursued by the NATO powers. Handouts of trillions of dollars and euros to the investing classes in bank bailouts massively fueled inflation, even as over 2 million people died of COVID-19 inside NATO.

Macron laid out a framework in which NATO can try to use the war to falsely blame Russia for the mounting social and economic suffering caused by the official handling of the pandemic. Having admitted that the NATO powers are working to cut Russia out of international trade, he proceeded to blame Russia for the acceleration of inflation and economic disruption the NATO trade embargo on Russia will produce.

What Kind of Threat Is China?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Book review of “America and the China Threat: From the End of History to the End of Empire” by Prof. Paolo Urio

The “brutalist philosophy” of the US was made public (曝光) by Robert Daly, a former US diplomat stationed in Beijing, in 2015. Currently, he is the director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States. No diplomatic niceties here, Daly frankly states the policy of the US: China must never reach the level of the US.

What Kind of Threat Is China?

Progressive Red-Baiting is Still Red-Baiting

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Progressive Red-Baiting is Still Red-Baiting

Interesting stats:

It’s also worth noting that Kunce’s recurring implication that China is driving the buying up of small farms is entirely untrue. Missouri, like a dozen other states, banned foreign-owned corporations from buying farmland in 1978 but lifted the cap from 0% to 1% in 2013, which is what allowed Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods to buy up the pork land in question. China-based corporations are not even a top four foreign owner of Missouri farmland, with Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, and Italy taking the top spots, according to a 2019 federal report. Estimates vary, but the most highly cited number of Chinese farmland ownership in Missouri is 40,000 acres out of 350,000 foreign owned acres, or about 11 percent of all foreign owned land and 0.01% of total Missouri farmland.

China is a very small player in “foreign ownership” of U.S. farmland in general, yet mysteriously, almost exclusively who Kunce talks about when discussing the issue. According to the conservative think tank CSIS, “Canadian investors hold the largest share of [U.S. farmland], at 29 percent, with the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom collectively owning another 33 percent. The remaining 38 percent is held by entities from almost a hundred other countries. Although Congress has become increasingly concerned about Chinese land purchases, investors from China currently own only a small fraction of this land, at 191,652 acres (0.05 percent of the total).” Another 2019 federal report puts the number at less than 0.02 percent, less than Cayman Islands.

The Left’s Covid Failure

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Mainly, though, this has been a historic failure from the Left, which will have disastrous consequences. Any form of popular dissent is likely to be hegemonized once again by the (extreme) Right, poleaxing any chance the Left has of winning round the voters it needs to overturn Right-wing hegemony. Meanwhile, the Left holds on to a technocracy of experts severely undermined by what is proving to be a catastrophic handling of the pandemic in terms of social progressivism. As any kind of viable electable Left fades into the past, the discussion and dissent at the heart of any true democratic process is likely to fade with it.

The Left’s Covid Failure