- China

Former World Bank Chief On The West-East Wealth Transfer, And The Africa 'Problem'

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 21:01:01 -0700

No Recourse For Toxic Imports

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:10:32 -0600

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

China's New 42-km Sea-Bridge Is World's Largest

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 22:20:46 -0600

What could go wrong?

I would be infinitely more impressed with a wind/solar hybrid ferry system - huge solar and wind powered water dwelling ferries, much safer and robust than a static structure I would think. Perhaps not as fast, but I'd rather be on a boat than on a bridge that long.

Source: CBC - June 30, 2011

China has opened the world's longest cross-sea bridge.

The Jiaozhou Bay bridge is 42 kilometres long and links China's eastern port city of Qingdao to an offshore island, Huangdao.

State-run CCTV says the 35-metre-wide bridge is the longest of its kind and cost about $1.5 billion Cdn.

CCTV says the bridge passed construction appraisals on Monday and the bridge and an undersea tunnel opened to traffic on Thursday.

It has taken four years to build the bridge, which is supported by more than 5,000 pillars.

According to the Guinness World Records book, the previous record-holder for a bridge over water is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana. The Chinese bridge is more than four kilometres longer.

Ghost Buildings And Trees Appear In Chinese City?

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:33:10 -0600

Beijing Battling Protest Fires On All Fronts

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:40:13 -0600

Source: The Australian - June 15, 2011

AN eruption of protests throughout China has sent armoured vehicles into town centres, prompted an internet blackout by the government and left thousands across the country blogging about "crazy" violence on the streets.

The summer surge of protests, which flared in the southern industrial hub of Zengcheng over the weekend, has been linked to a range of frustrations with modern China - furies that have drawn the government into crackdowns on activism and massive increases in the domestic security budget.

More than 1000 migrant workers went on the rampage in Zengcheng after a pregnant street vendor in her 20s was roughed up by security guards. Such incidents, while distressing, are not uncommon. Witnesses said that the centre of town was bedlam, with smashed windows, blazing police vehicles and teargas explosions as rioters hurled missiles at an official building. One bank worker blogged that the Bank of China had ordered an immediate halt to all ATM transactions.

In central Hubei province armoured cars were used last week to quell a riot over the death of Ran Jianxin, an official who had led the fight against corruption in the town of Lichuan but died mysteriously in police custody.

The protests followed bomb attacks on government facilities in two other cities in the past three weeks, and ethnic unrest in the northern region of Inner Mongolia last month.

Although few see China as a likely arena for uprisings in the style of the Arab Spring, Beijing remains terrified that the fast-rising tally of localised protests could be linked via mobile social networking and Twitter-style websites.

Some Chinese academics believe that the true number of protests in the country last year was more than 180,000. After several big clashes in recent weeks the names of half a dozen big towns have been eradicated from the search engines of the country's most popular microblogging sites.

One of the "disappeared" cities, Dongguan, is the fourth-largest producer of exports in the country and has a population only slightly smaller than London's.

The recent violence, however, has exposed the limits of the government's ability to control the urban population using internet censorship what party leaders refer to as "social management".

Authorities have turned to displays of raw power, deploying paramilitary police and armoured vehicles in at least three cities in as many weeks to prevent violence from spiralling further as protesters have repeatedly directed their anger at government buildings, often ostentatious symbols of power. What connects the violence is the way a flashpoint - in Inner Mongolia, the death of a Mongol at the hands of a Han Chinese truck driver, and in southern China, the assault by security personnel on a pregnant migrant worker - sets off much wider conflagrations.

GM Breast Milk

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 20:56:41 -0600

Jim Rogers: Politicians Will Make Things Much Worse

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 22:31:29 -0600

If Yemen Falls, So Does the Dollar Reserve?

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 10:54:24 -0600

Source: Gold Speculator - June 4, 2011

How is it that the world's fortunes hang on the life or death of a murderous thug that the US has been supporting for 30 years? And why, in fact, if Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh is so important, isn't it common knowledge? Saleh was wounded yesterday when opposition forces blew up his palace. But as I'll discuss, below, there's more to the story. (Isn't there always?)

In my opinion, this story is so big it should be on the front pages of the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal: "US dollar hegemony hangs in the balance." Or how's this: "Future of the world's monetary system may be decided in Yemen's Sana’a."

How can one silly, little and desperately poor country full of people in ankle-length white robes be in the position to shake the foundations of the current monetary system of the Anglo-American empire?

First, context. It hasn't been a good year for the West's power elite. Yemen is only one country in tumult. Other countries verging on civil war are Bahrain and Syria. (Libya is already convulsed.) But in fact there are hundreds of places in the Middle East, Africa and Europe now where people are demonstrating and marching – or fighting with various levels of efficiency and organization.

In Afghanistan, the Obama administration is said to be desperately searching for Mullah Omar, the one-eyed leader of the Taliban, now and again reported dead or missing. US officials, in turn, wish to find Omar so that they can work out a deal where the US declares victory and Omar retains the territory. Some victory.

Libya is currently in a stalemate; China is Pakistan's new best friend; Pakistan's generals are again denying what Ms. Hillary Clinton – US Secretary of State – said only a week ago, that the Pakistan army was about to launch a significant attack against the Pashtun/Taliban. It's not true, the generals say.

Meanwhile, Egypt's youths sleep on the streets; Tunisian youth are no happier; Iran is gaining considerable regional influence because of the "color revolutions" that the CIA apparently triggered. Iraq is destabilizing again, and even the Palestinians are resurgent.

The Arab Awakening is truly a regional if not global phenomenon. Of course, we have our own name for it: The Internet Reformation. It's really the same thing. Just as the Gutenberg press spawned the Renaissance and Reformation, so the Internet has now spawned a truly significant social convulsion. The world will never be the same.

America's CIA-sponsored AYM youth movements were behind the initial color revolutions. But notice how the mainstream press has stopped celebrating them. Perhaps they haven't worked out as planned. Either Western elites are encouraging a series of Arab Islamic Republics (so as to buttress what seems to be an essentially phony "war on terror") or they are trying to create controllable regulatory democracies that will likely be run by dependable militaries with a constitutional façade. Neither of these options looks to be feasible in the near term.

Alternatively, the West seeks generalized chaos for some reason – or, more intriguingly, it has simply lost control of the situation. As we've stated before, Yemen is important because it may well indicate how much control the West actually has over the Arab Awakening. So far, what's been most apparent is dithering. The West hasn't shown a firm hand. There are reasons why.

Yemen may be spinning out of Western control. After Saleh was wounded, he was quoted as saying, "I salute our armed forces and the security forces for standing up firmly to confront this challenge by an outlaw gang that has nothing to do with the so-called youth revolution." It's interesting that the words Saleh used were "outlaw gang" as the tribal opposition to his rule denied making the attack. Apparently, it was what one might call "an inside job."

That means that individuals nominally allied with Saleh tried to knock him off. And why not? He is a thoroughly despicable man. He has ruled Yemen for about 30 years through a mixture of truculence and torture; like Gaddaffi, his favorite method of staying in power is one of "divide and conquer" in which he set various tribes against each other.

Yup ... Yemen is another "tribal backwater" like Afghanistan – a place where the Anglo-American elite (exaggeratedly) has no interest. It is like a kid kicking a stone past the house of a pretty girl. He just happened along the way ... and thus the US just "happened' into Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, the US is intensely interested – mesmerized in a kind of Ted Bundy (bad) way.

How seriously does the Anglo-American empire take Afghanistan (as a speed-bump on the way to world government)? Try, probably, say ... US$2 trillion in expenditures, thousands killed and tens of thousands wounded. True the total all-in cost hasn't been as much as Vietnam (50,000 dead and 500,000 wounded) but there's considerable evidence that the US has been undercounting the dead and wounded through a variety of manipulations.

Yemen has never presented the same kind of problem as Afghanistan. In part that's because Yemen is even more difficult to subdue militarily than the stiff-necked Pashtun Taliban. The West has wanted as little to do with Yemen as possible (outside of controlling the coastline). Here's a description of Yemen by Paul Herman of the New Zealand Post in a recent article entitled "Cry, cry and cry again for my beloved Yemen."

So now my beloved Yemen is on the verge of going up in flames, on the verge of a cataclysmic civil war. I say "my beloved" because I had such an extraordinary time there on an Intrepid Journey a few years back Not a lot of people actually know where Yemen is. I don't think I really did until I checked a map before we went there. It is essentially the bottom left portion of the Arabian Peninsula. And what I certainly didn't realise about the entire Arabian Peninsula is that a massive mountain range runs north to south down its western side, sloping down eventually to the Red Sea.

In fact, the Saudis move their capital up to the mountains, to Taif, during the ferocious Arabian summers. The Yemeni capital Sana'a sits in this same mountain range. The thing about Yemen is the architecture. There is nothing like it in the world. They seem to have engineering in their genes. They built skyscrapers when no one was doing it.

Osama Bin Laden's father, who got rich building roads in Saudi Arabia, was Yemeni. He got so rich he rebuilt the mosque at Mecca with his own money. Old Man bin Laden came from one of the most spectacular parts of the world I have ever seen, the Wadi Hadromaut. It is probably as vast and as breathtaking as the Grand Canyon. And all through this great and ancient valley are villages perched on high, impossible sites, above steep cliffs, and you look at them and marvel because they have been there hundreds and hundreds of years.

How in God's name did they do that, you find yourself asking time and again, round every corner. It's the same through the entire country, especially in that great mountain range, villages with slim, square buildings six or seven storeys on the most unreachable ridges and peaks. And, of course, that was the point. Defensively, they are brilliantly sited. The truth is, neither the Turks - of whom there are still some 10,000 in Yemen - nor the British ever really conquered anywhere but the Yemeni coast. You couldn't get near those mountain villages. The Yemenis simply rolled great rocks down on you.

As Afghanistan is the key to Middle Asia, so Yemen is the key to "Arabia." The tribes of Oman and the Arab Emirates flowed out of Yemen. And today Yemen is no less important than before in terms of the Great Game. It is perched on the edge of one of the most important waterways in the world and fronts the soft underbelly of Saudi Arabia – the part where many of the most profitable oil wells are located.

Yemen is formidable, and strangely important. But because of the mountains, because of the tribes, because of the weaponry (three rifles for every Yemeni), because boys are expected to be proficient with weapons from an early age, Yemen has not been high on the list of the Anglosphere's "civilizing" influences.
Ironically, the Yemenis are very similar culturally to the Somalis – from the same Somalia that Western newscasters like to call a failed state. (A failed state is any country that stands in the way of the West's dash toward One World Government.)

What Western mainstream media isn't bothering to report, however, is that the Anglo-American power elite could already have done away with Saleh if it wanted to. He's their man and has been for all of his violent existence. It is reprehensible that that Western elites would rather let Yemen drift into civil war than cease to support Saleh. There have been no moves made in the UN to put pressure on Saleh, no sanctions – only apparently regular ammo and tear gas refills, which he has used to slaughter hundreds of Yemenis.

The Western elites have not moved to do away with Saleh because they cannot apparently find a thug to put in his place that will garner a modicum of tribal support. The result of all this is growing antipathy. Possibly, because Yemen is another funny "impoverished backwater," the US has handled the Yemen very badly. The whole country is inflamed. Saleh, now wounded, will likely never get his power back and the chances that the CIA will have the opportunity to create a new Saleh are growing slimmer by the minute.

The Saudis worked desperately to move Saleh out of power. It is easy to see why now; that was their leverage. But now the nightmare scenario has occurred: increasingly the Saudis are perceived as propping Saleh up (which they are doing actually by not removing him). Ultimately all this returns to the US and the Pentagon, which in turn does the bidding of the City of London. So, here is the answer to the question asked at the beginning of this article. The answer is ...

SAUDI ARABIA!

The corrupt and vicious Saudi regime lies at the heart of Money Power. Without Saudi willingness to support the continued dollar-oil exchange (forcing the rest of the world to hold dollars) the dollar reserve currency system seriously degrades.

The current system was put in place in the 1940s, but it was elaborated on in 1971, when the US severed the last link between gold and the dollar and substituted oil. How did the Anglosphere elites manage this trick? Using Mao's observation: "power springs from the barrel of a gun."

The Saudis were willing accomplices, but in reality they didn't have a choice. The world's economy, when you come down to it, is a product of American military force. Use the dollar to buy oil or else ... But if the US and Saudi Arabia cannot control the spiraling disaster in Yemen, the next stop on the revolutionary train is Bahrain. And after that ... Saudi Arabia. And THIS time, events may not be easily salvageable. The Internet has educated the Arab world about its history.

If the Anglosphere elites had only used their tremendous industrial and monetary advantages to build a free-market instead of a phony one (disguised as a free one)! But the elites chose to propagate a central banking economy in order to chase after world government, and now they are in danger of an eroding dollar reserve, which could eventually result in the creation of an entirely new (and uncontrollable) currency. Anyway, if Saudi Arabia falls, the dominoes may simply keep tumbling. Who pays any attention to funny little countries like Yemen anyway?

BBC HARDtalk: Jim Rogers Interview

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sun, 29 May 2011 10:22:15 -0600

Bruce Lee - His Own Words

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sat, 07 May 2011 20:31:13 -0600

U.S. Sen. John McCain Calls For U.S. To Arm Rebels

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:49:52 -0600

Libya is being set up as an arms sales bonanza, another Vietnam for the world, only this time involving an entree of European flavour, making the whole endeavour rather a coming out, or a who's who in the world of global arms trafficking. The UN/NATO military force will wisely direct the war, always insuring a pretty even playing field, heavy losses on both sides, but not so much as to deplete the long term objective too quickly (see Gaddafi's gold horde). Many missiles, and many more lives later the show is rolled up, the invaded country is divided, and that which remains is carved up and taken by those whose power of force allows them to do so. I can only imagine what Russian and Chinese power brokers think about this cascade of audacious maneuvers throughout the Middle Kingdom....

Source: International Business Times - April 22, 2011

Sen. John McCain, who visited the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi on Friday, called for the United States and every other nation to recognize the rebels fighting against forces led by Col. Muammar Gaddafi and for "responsible" nations to arm them.

McCain is the most senior U.S. official to visit Libya since the conflict began, said Friday's visit was "one of the most exciting and inspiring days of my life" and applauded the rebel leadership for "their remarkable progress in this struggle for liberation."

"First, I would encourage every nation, especially the United States, to recognize the Transitional National Council as the legitimate voice of the Libyan people. They've earned this right, and Gaddafi has forfeited it by waging war on his own people," McCain said in a released statement.

"Second, governments that have frozen assets of the Qaddafi regime should release some of that money to the Transitional National Council so that they can sustain, improve, and expand their capacity to govern justly," he added.

McCain also said NATO - which is in charge of protecting civilians in Libya from Col. Muammar Gaddafi's forces - should "urgently step up" the air campaign, especially in Misurata, the site of intense fighting in recent days.

He said more close air support in the form of A-10 and AC-130 jets were needed. He also applauded the recent use of Predator drone aircraft to help in the effort. U.S. defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday that the aircraft would allow for more precise airstrikes from low altitudes in populated areas.

McCain also called for nations to provide help to the TNC through command and control support, battlefield intelligence, training, and weapons.

"I have met with these brave fighters, and they are not Al-Qaeda. To the contrary: They are Libyan patriots who want to liberate their nation. We should help them do it," he said.

China's Ghost Cities And Shopping Malls

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 17:19:41 -0600

China Closes Half The Nation's Dairies

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:33:22 -0600

Source: The Telegraph - April 3, 2011

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, says of over 1,100 dairies inspected, 426 failed to pass the licensing renewal test.

Another 107 were ordered to suspend production until they improved operations.

Fearing many dairy owners will ignore the production ban and secretly resume operations, officials also issued a warning. "Production without a licence will be strictly punished according to the law," the agency said.

Like other parts of China's food sector, the dairy industry has been riddled with poisoning and toxin scandals that have repeatedly shaken consumer confidence.

...

And earlier this year, it was reported dairy manufacturers had illegally added a leather protein powder to their products in another bid to cheat protein-content checks.

Last month, the public was panicked once more when it was disclosed illegal additives were used in pig feed, so tainting one of the countries staples dishes, pork.

Russia Steps in to Supply Japan’s Energy Needs

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 17:13:30 -0600

Source: The Trumpet - March 16, 2011

The recent earthquake in Japan unleashed a chain of events that shut down five to eight oil refineries and partially melted down three nuclear reactors. As the specter of energy shortages stalks the country, the Kremlin is riding to the rescue.

As the scope of the tragedy became clearer over the course of last weekend, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev came to the rescue and pledged to help make up Japan’s energy deficit by boosting supplies from nearby Siberia. “Our moral duty is to help in this situation,” stated Medvedev on Monday as he ordered Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin to look into ways of redirecting up to 6,000 megawatts of electrical power to Japan. Medvedev also arranged for the delivery of an additional 200,000 tons of liquefied natural gas and an unspecified amount of Siberian coal over the next two months.

The Tokyo earthquake and resulting tsunami is forcing Japan to build both political and economic bridges to energy-laden Russia. A strong tri-corner alliance between Tokyo, Moscow and Beijing is about to form.

Japan Attempts To Curb Rare Earth Dependence On China

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 13:42:09 -0700

Spending money does not equate to producing rare earths ready for market, this is a long and expensive project, and China has the lead by a ways now, just when these metals are going to be needed most. In the graph above it's clearly shown that the United States is basically eaten by China in the rare earths market, the difference perhaps between a command and control economy, and the form of hyper crony capitalism (cannabalism) here in the west.

Source: International Business Times - February 25, 2011

The Japanese government and private companies will spend $1.34 billion to curb Japan's dependence on rare-earth imports from China by a third, the Nikkei news report said Friday.

Japan to curb rare earth dependence on China

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has selected an initial 110 companies that will receive subsidies totaling 33.1 billion yen, as part of efforts to diversify procurement and additionally invest 9 billion yen in other subsidies and encourage more companies to apply for them, the report said.

Rare earth metals have a wide variety of applications. They are used in hybrid car motors, computer hard drives, cell phones, and wind turbines. They are also essential for military equipment. Jet engines, smart bombs and guided missiles, lasers, radar, night vision goggles, and satellites all depend on rare earth metals to function.

The investments are expected to slash Japan's annual imports of rare-earth elements from China by about 10,000 tons from the current 30,000 tons, the paper added.

China suspended exports of rare-earth elements to Japan as an apparent protest to the arrest of a Chinese skipper in early September, following his boat's collision with Japanese coastguard vessels off disputed islets in the East China Sea. Beijing said it re-stared exports in late September, but Japanese traders said shipments resumed only very slowly.

China, has exported 6,000 tons, or 49.8 percent, of its total rare earth to Japan, representing a 167 percent rise year on year, according to China's Ministry of Commerce.

According to the US Geological Survey's Mineral Commodities Summary, China produces approximately 97 per cent of the world's rare earth. Of the 124,000 tonnes of ore mined in the year 2009, China produced 120,000 tonnes.

China mines about 90 percent of the world's rare earth minerals - which is a collection of seventeen chemical elements and is used to various technological devices, cellular phones, high performance batteries, flat screen televisions, green energy technology, and are critical to the future of hybrid and electric cars, high-tech military applications and superconductors and fiber-optic communication systems.

China has been reducing export quotas of rare earth minerals for the past few years, citing environmental concerns. However, Wang Caifeng, who is in charge of setting up the China Rare Earth Industry Association, stated that China might slightly raise the production cap and export quota next year.

China's monopoly of the rare earths market has allowed it to manipulate this market by restricting production, using export quotas to limit global supply, and increasing taxes on rare earth metals. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has estimated that non-Chinese producers pay at least 31 percent more for raw rare earth metals than Chinese producers. As a result a black market in rare earths has developed.