John Chuckman
COMMENTS – RECENT BITS AND PIECES – VOLUME EIGHT
President Xi’s wonderful program to eradicate extreme
poverty makes a second achievement worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.
It is simply not the kind of massive national task we see undertaken by many states. China can be proud.
The other reason President Xi deserves the Peace Prize is his Belt and Road Initiative (the BRI -the New Silk Road).
It connects many parts of the world in worthy tasks. It promotes cooperation and understanding. It will change the world’s economic geography while improving the lives and prospects of hundreds of millions.
But, sadly, the US has long had a lock on who gets the prizes.
Norway would never dare offend American geopolitical sensitivities, which is the reason so many mediocrities and nobodies receive the Prize.
For example, worthy figures like Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning would never be considered.
Much as in the days of the British Empire, the world’s most notable peace figure, Gandhi, never received the Prize for fear of offending Britain.
Peace Prize or not, President Xi is a truly exceptional national leader, one of the greatest we've seen.
_____________________________
America looks after its wealthy corporations and people and, to some extent, the armies which maintain and expand its empire.
It has never looked after its people.
____________________________
Why is the US obsessed with smearing Xinjiang through gimmicks?”
Obsession is an American national trait.
The long-term history of the United States is packed with obsessions. Aboriginal people. Black slavery. The Spanish Empire. Guns. Mexico. Alcohol. Drugs.
A good many Americans have roots back to the Puritans (called the Pilgrims in the US), an extreme Protestant sect known to serious historians for a great deal of ugly behavior.
For example, after the Reformation, they ran through the ancient cathedrals of England, breaking glorious stained-glass windows and monuments and even destroying the burial places of ancient saints.
They were kicked out of some European countries for just that reason. But when they came to America, they came to be regarded as religious refugees. Religious terrorists might be closer to the mark.
Puritanism is in the gene pool of America. Here is just a sample of the destructive obsessions it generated.
America was for decades obsessed with communism. It was said that the American Communist Party only survived with all the membership dues of undercover FBI agents.It was obsessed with Cuba and Castro and literally had a small army of CIA people working full-time against their interests. There were literally hundreds of attempts on Castro’s life.
It was obsessed with Russia during the Cold War. The fading Cold War obsession has taken on a new form and central importance, so we just had a Pentagon general dangerously talking about Russia as an “existential threat.”
It is obsessed by poor Venezuela and its seven-times elected government, and it is doing everything it can think of to destroy it. It hurts millions of ordinary people.
It has been obsessed by Iran for over forty years. It encouraged war against Iran by Iraq and saw Iraq supplied with illegal chemical weapons. It has used sabotage and terror and assassination against Iran.
It was obsessed by Vietnam and spent ten years there killing and destroying and achieving absolutely nothing. For the last twenty years, it has had a similar obsession with Afghanistan, where it has killed many peasants and achieved nothing.
It is obsessed with China today because in many things it cannot compete. It is intensely resentful and jealous of China’s success and fears losing its leading position in the world. I say “leading position” because for the most part the United States does not offer genuine leadership, leadership being much larger than just your own interests.
Extreme obsession is a form of madness, and madness takes no interest in facts.
______________________________
Actually, there is no country on earth which less deserves to be on the UN Human Rights Council than the US.
Since WW II, the US is estimated to have killed about 20 million people with all its many wars, coups, and incursions – none of them having anything to do with defense.
Many died horribly from weapons like napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, and poison gas (as supplied to Iraq in the terrible Iran-Iraq War), It also has left such departing gifts as tons of Agent Orange, tons of depleted uranium dust, the unholy pollution of “burn pits,” and countless landmines.
It hurt and injured still more, and it generated many millions of desperate refugees. A very substantial part of America’s population, including the last President, treats those refugees with contempt, too.
It has befriended and supplied some of the world’s worst dictators and tyrants and war criminals where it was geopolitically advantageous to do so. It still does in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Gulf States, Israel, plus other places.
The terrible torture of prisoners of conscience, like Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning, means nothing. It long maintained an international gulag of black sites to do its own torturing.
Human rights, democratic values, and rule of law are only phrases for America’s government.
_________________________________
“Enjoy this new normal of Canada-U.S. relations while it lasts”
What “new normal” relations?
I see no change at all, except the superficial change of tone and language.
It is still, in every important detail of Canada’s external affairs under this government, a relationship of doing just as Washington suggests.
Canada today stands for no important principles, as against the persecution of Julian Assange or the mass killing of Saudi Arabia or the tyranny of Egypt or America’s endless wars or terrible treatment of Venezuela.
We sell weapons to monsters in Saudi Arabia. We support the toppling of a seven-times elected government in Venezuela and favor an unelected Washington servant, Juan Guaido. We regularly make unsupported statements about China, about Russia, and about Iran.
We support the baseless claim that Russia’s Alexei Navalny – a convicted felon, a man of prejudice, an extreme nationalist, and a frequent liar – is a prisoner of conscience. Even Amnesty International has dropped that tissue of lies.
We do nothing to see a just settlement for the suffering in Eastern Ukraine in line with the Minsk Accords, which Russia helped negotiate. Instead, we jump on the American bandwagon of “What can we do today with ships and tanks to irritate Russia?”
So much so, it is rather depressing. We have an echo chamber, not a government.
______________________________
Nothing better demonstrates what a mindless servant of the United States the EU has become than it creating more sanctions on Venezuela, a country which has suffered terribly under US abuse.
The government of Venezuela has been freely elected seven times, counting the political party’s previous leader.
If that isn’t democracy, I don’t know what is.
And just look at the farce that passes for democracy in the US.
___________________________
“Canada’s Parliament Votes to Condemn Genocide in China”
What is genocide, which, for many reasons is one of the misused words of our day?
The effort to kill a great number of a particular kind of people.
Is this happening in China?
Absolutely not, and the facts speak for themselves.
The Uighur (Muslim) population in China is growing healthily. Indeed, faster than the Han population.
Canada should be ashamed to be talking about “genocide” in China.
Trudeau again has taken some of the worst of American vicious politics to embrace in Canada. Did he not learn with such fiascos as Huawei or his repulsive support for overthrowing an elected government in Venezuela?
Do our Parliamentarians know anything about the internal workings of China?
Absolutely not. So why do they discuss what they know nothing about when there are important matters that should be dealt with?
By the way, those who follow affairs even know where this shabby rumor, promoted by the US in its jealousy and resentment of China, originated. It is totally without credibility.
If there really were genocide in China, or anywhere, does anyone in his or her right mind think a call to move the Olympics would be a proper response?
Of course not.
This is just a cheap stunt.
