Moe Lane

Specifically, implications re: the Chinese.

Apparently, it all has to do with the fact that those are wild carp jumping into the boat, there.  Wild carp – which in America are imported pests that the federal government is trying to get rid off (with good reason*) – is a delicacy in the People’s Republic of China.  An expensive delicacy, given that the PRC has precisely the sort of endemic pollution that one should expect from Commie regimes.  40% of their waterways don’t meet the Chi-Com’s own standards; by ours the Chinese local environment is something out of a cyberpunk novel.  How bad is it, in fact?  Well, let me put it this way: it’s roughly ten times or so worse than the agitprop released about the USA to drum up donations for Big Green.  Hence the wistful looks abroad at all those tasty, tasty fish, just jumping into the boat… (more…)

Before you ask: I was raised in a union household.  I know precisely what that word means, and I am using it precisely as my late father the local union president would have used it if he had lived to read this Wall Street Journal article by former SEIU boss Andy Stern.  Let me summarize said article: I, Andy Stern, am a cheap date* who can be easily persuaded to publicly abandon support for the most successful economic/fiscal system in human history in exchange to a free trip to the Great Wall of China.  But ignore for right now Stern’s unfortunate (for him) timing in writing a remarkably servile paean to the planned Chinese economy at precisely (I’m fond of that word this morning, it seems) the moment when the Chinese economy is looking alarmingly fragile to the rest of the world.  Let’s instead talk about the state of organized labor in the People’s Republic of China, shall we?

Well, in at least one way you can certainly say that labor’s organized in the PRC: the ChiComs haven’t been shy about instituting absolute and exclusive control over trade unions.  There’s precisely one trade union in China – the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, which is, as CNN helpfully notes, “a government-sanctioned organization whose primary mission is to support Communist party policies and seek basic compensation for workers.”  If you don’t like that union?  Suffer.  Want to start your own?  Here comes the cops.  Want to do collective bargaining?  Oh, you poor, naive so-and-so – hey, wait: isn’t Andy Stern in favor of collective bargaining?  Why, yes, so he is. So why is Stern supporting a country where they routinely oppress the workers (including children)  in ways that go beyond even the most fetid fever-swamp agitprop of the American labor movement?  Particularly when labor unrest in China just keeps increasing?

Oh, right.  Because Andy Stern’s a scab that got bought off by a Center for American Progress-sponsored trip to China.  I’m embarrassed on behalf of my old man; Stern didn’t even have the decency to be expensive to buy.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I originally had a different noun there.  But I decided that it  was too insulting to sex workers.

To mangle the Diane Duane quote… Joe Biden should always be taken everyplace twice: the second time, to apologize.  This particular – week’s? day’s? minute’s? nanosecond’s? – example shows our esteemed Vice President signing off on the PRC’s draconian population control techniques.  Bolding I presume Mark Hemingway’s:

But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China.  You have no safety net.  Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people.  Not sustainable.

I’m sure that Biden didn’t actually mean to endorse the People Republic of China’s policy of population control via forced abortions; but he certainly meant to avoid making a moral judgement on the practice.  Which is, by the way, vile, disgusting, and not compatible with the reasonable expectations of moral behavior from a truly civilized nation-state.  I’d just thought that I’d pass that bit of cultural elitism along, since my country’s current leadership team is a bit too scared to.

Geez.  Even the Russians are less backward about this sort of thing, these days.

Moe Lane

…not one of their best CGI results, but there’s at least one good photoshopped image in there.

Via Buzzfeed: interestingly, the original story about the Taliban supposedly training monkeys to fire guns originates from… the official newspaper for the People’s Republic of China.  Why do I have the feeling that the rest of the world is getting somehow sucked into the lingering aftereffects of the last Chinese civil war?

You’ll be wanting to answer THAT WOMAN’s question, methinks.

It’s widely rumored that Jon Huntsman (former Republican governor of Utah, and current ambassador to the People’s Republic of China) has future political ambitions: I submit that those ambitions will quickly die the True Death if he does not address the recent ridiculousness over our State Department apologizing to the People’s Republic of China for Arizona’s enforcement of the government’s own illegal immigration policy. Because it’s now officially part of the national discussion:

The absolute low point of this campaign came last Friday, when a U.S. State Department delegation met with Chinese negotiators to discuss human rights. Apparently, our State Department felt it necessary to make their Chinese guests feel less bad about their own record of human rights abuses by repeatedly atoning for American “sins” – including, it seems, the Arizona immigration/pro-border security law. Asked if Arizona came up at all during the meeting, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner answered:

“We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first session, and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination, and that these are issues very much being debated in our own society.”

Note that he said “We brought it up” – not the Chinese, but the U.S. State Department’s own delegation. Instead of grilling the Chinese about their appalling record on human rights, the State Department continued the unbelievable apology tour by raising “early and often” Arizona’s decision to secure our border.

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Business as usual, in other words. Remember, it doesn’t count if it’s not impacting the First World:

Some of the greenest technologies of the age, from electric cars to efficient light bulbs to very large wind turbines, are made possible by an unusual group of elements called rare earths. The world’s dependence on these substances is rising fast.

Just one problem: These elements come almost entirely from China, from some of the most environmentally damaging mines in the country, in an industry dominated by criminal gangs.

That’s actually three problems, all of which are more or less independent of each other. Fixing any one of the three wouldn’t solve the other two, although fixing at least one probably certainly wouldn’t hurt; but, for example, the mines will still be ecological menaces even absent the criminal elements and single-source production.  All in all, chalk up another win for the Law of Unintended Consequences, although Law of Unconsidered Consequences may be more accurate here.  After all, a little bit of research beforehand would have easily warned would-be innovators that there would be road bumps on this particular road to Shangri-La.

Whether they would have cared is another question, of course…

Moe Lane

PS: This may be the best bit from the article:

“This industry wants to save the world,” said Nicholas Curtis, the executive chairman of the Lynas Corporation of Australia, in a speech to an industry gathering in Hong Kong in late November. “We can’t do it and leave a product that is glowing in the dark somewhere else, killing people.”

Actually, it’s much more accurate to say that’s what they’re doing now, only without the ‘saving the world’ part; they’re just being uncomfortable at being caught at it.

Crossposted to RedState.

…but it is worth your perusal:

As a criticism… I know that the Rule of Three applies, but SNL may have wanted to just stop at two. You’ll understand what I mean when you see it.

Via AoSHQ.

No, really.

Via here. I don’t want to turn this into ‘POTUS Goes To China’ Saturday, mind you – but, come on: flaming bust of Obama? You can’t expect me not to at least mention it.

Moe Lane

There’s Something About Mass Murder That Just Never Goes Out of Style.

There’s a few in this one:

• Using a bloodthirsty Communist dictator to sell T-shirts.
• Watching quite a lot of administration pushback on the socialism thing get casually subverted by some guy in China trying to sell some T-shirts.
• The Chinese kicking off a visit that’s supposed to be about mutual cultural outreach by banning the T-shirt in question.

Although I suppose that the last one is an improvement. Back in the day, they’d just have taken the vendors out, shot them, then charged their families for the bullet.

Moe Lane

PS: They’re available for sale here, which is a site that will cheerfully pander to both sides of the spectrum when selling you overpriced President-themed junk.

Because that’s AMERICA.

Crossposted to RedState.

I understand that they can be easily enough removed with a combination of WD-40 and a razor blade. Some people should get cracking with that…

In an attempt to gain favor with China, the United States pressured Tibetan representatives to postpone a meeting between the Dalai Lama and President Obama until after Obama’s summit with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, scheduled for next month, according to diplomats, government officials and other sources familiar with the talks.

For the first time since 1991, the Tibetan spiritual leader will visit Washington this week and not meet with the president. Since 1991, he has been here 10 times. Most times the meetings have been “drop-in” visits at the White House. The last time he was here, in 2007, however, George W. Bush became the first sitting president to meet with him publicly, at a ceremony at the Capitol in which he awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress’s highest civilian award.

…because it’s just the first step. Given the passive-aggressive nature of this administration, the next step will be to see whether enough people squawk at this; if they don’t, they’ll start making it ‘difficult’ for the Dalai Lama to visit the United States. And if he passes away, expect the USA to keep its mouth shut and let the PRC do… whatever the PRC plans to do about the religious leader’s successor. All part of the task of the day – which is to improve the PRC’s IMF standing, apparently. Why it’s up to the USA to do that* is a reason known only to God and the President, and I’ll avoid the obvious sneer this time. It seems unfair to taunt people who now have to go out and do work on their cars because of this…

Moe Lane

PS: Via Below the Beltway – and, to answer Doug’s confusion as to which is worse; it’d be if this was done unilaterally. If we negotiated to this it’d at least imply that we got a concession in return, which would be something, from a realpolitik point of view.

Moe Lane

*But if the People’s Republic of China is looking for advice, here’s some for free: try being a democratic republic, run on open market principles. Yes, I know: physician, heal thyself. Still, it’s good advice.

Crossposted to RedState.

Number made up, but trust me: I could find forty-four more examples, ya, you betcha.

Here’s the thing: I’ve met Michael Barone. I know that he’s smart. Frighteningly so, in fact. And I know that he pays attention to details, in ways that usually startle the living life out of people who aren’t used to it. In other words, this is an aware guy that we’re talking about.

So why the surprise, here?

All of which brings to mind the report of a conservative blogger who watched George W. Bush’s 2005 inaugural speech with a group of liberals. Every time Bush called for spreading freedom and democracy around the world, the crowd guffawed and groaned and jeered. For them, evidently, Bush was a figure of fun, and his calls for democracy and human rights laughable. The same people who decried his supposed authoritarian rule at home had nothing but contempt for his call for freedom and democracy abroad.

Beneath this stated contempt is, I think, something in the nature of secret guilt. Or rather, anger at the notion that Bush had stolen the issues of human rights and democracy from the liberals.

The desire to oppose the Iraq war root and branch, to denounce every aspect of it, imposed a duty to dismiss as laughable Bush’s stated objective — set out eloquently before the decision to take military action as well as after it — of advancing democracy in the Middle East. A duty to side with those, like the National Intelligence Council nominee, who have long held that governance in the style of Saudi Arabia or Syria is the best that can be hoped for in that region, and the best for all concerned. A duty to dismiss with contempt, or simply to ignore, the rather remarkable strides of the Iraqis themselves made after enduring decades of brutal tyranny.

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