John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY GODFREE ROBERTS IN UNZ REVIEW
Does China Outspend US on Defense?
Can We Afford an Arms Race with the World’s Biggest Economy?
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Response to a comment about the way China steals America’s intellectual property (and there were a number of such comments):
Do you have any idea of America's own historical record?
In the late 18th and through the 19th century, Americans travelled to Europe - especially to Britain and France - and bought copies of anything new they could lay their hands on - farm machinery and implements, window sashes, new gadgets of every description, fashions, textiles, and newly published books and music.
They brought the items home to be studied and copied, if at all possible, given America's generally lower level of technology. The theft was on a massive scale.
Dickens, on his visit to the US, was furious to see his latest novel from his British publisher re-published in Boston in an edition for which he would receive not a cent of royalties.
Theft of intellectual property was one of the major avenues for America’s advance for more than a century.
So, it's really a little odd to hear or read all the American self-righteous claims today over China.
As though America always played fair.
America has never played fair, at anything, so long as it could get away with it.
But that's good old America for you - breaking the rules and being self-righteous while doing it.
Big Fat Mike Pompeo in a recent talk at Texas A &M University was chuckling and laughing about how in his days at CIA, they “lied, cheated, and stole."
That's Big Fat Mike Pompeo of "the Bible is always open on my desk."
And what do you think the NSA is doing to all of America's allies, not just its adversaries? It's stealing from them and their companies, big time.
America has simply become ridiculous.
