China & the West: A Story of Converging Authoritarianism at War with the People

China forsook Mao's socialism (really state capitalism) for unfettered 'neoliberalism' and the worship of market forces ruled over by a surveillance state. As Naomi Klein has observed there is a curious convergence between what is happening in China and in the West. The two are moving closer together.

But this is not taking place without resistance from the grassroots. China has its dissidents as does the US and Europe. That you don't hear about them through state-controlled mainstream media (MSM) doesn't mean they don't exist and that a battle is not going on.

Books like Red State Rebels provide us with an insight into the battle going on against the creeping fascism of the US corporate state. Europeans would do well to educate themselves with such books and to ask themselves exactly what lies behind the confrontations such as those we saw recently (on the Net at least) at the Democratic and Republican conventions.

And in China? These videos will give you a clue:

The New Left in China



The New Left in China, Pt II



Protest Movement Growing in China



Protest Movement Growing in China, Pt II



China's authoritarian Capitalism: A Global Trend?



China security tech supplied by US companies

Saakashvili – the shame of the Western media
from Russia Today

Much to my delight, the word is getting out. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili is slowly but surely being seen for what he is: a liar and an opportunist. However, my delight will never make up for the disdain I have for those among the commentariat who have protected him and covered up his lies. Western mainstream media continues to disgrace itself. And at the same time it lectures Russia about media standards. Again, we witness in front of our very eyes the death of outrage.

During Saakashvili’s war, we mostly heard from Saakashvili – not his victims or the Russian side. This of course was all so convenient for Saakashvili and his Western handlers. It was supposed to be that way. Saakashvili after all is Western – he’s “just like us.” But is he? Well, if he is just “like us,” we should be ashamed of ourselves and change – and look for better stooges to advance Washington’s neocon agenda.



The timelines are now becoming clear. Saakashvili ordered an attack against civilians he called his own. He said he “loved” the South Ossetian people and that we would never harm them. Only hours later, he attacked them in their beds – a 12-hour assault against innocent civilians. When things didn’t go the way he expected, he blamed Russia. The West’s commentariat swallowed this hook, line, and sinker. This was the commentariat’s first shame in the affair - much more follows.

To this day, Saakashvili is getting away with murder. Saakashvili started a war, with Washington’s support, and now expects a very pliant Western media to bail him out. Amazingly, and almost meeting his expectations, he nearly pulled it off. But the truth is catching up with him. Finally, there are those connecting the dots – Saakashvili has problems with dots being connected. He never really expected this. His Washington handlers in Tbilisi and the US were tasked with sanitising all of this. But it is not happening.

CNN, the BBC, Sky News, and all the American domestic networks cannot admit to their appalling coverage of Saakashvili’s preemptive war. Now they all prefer to ignore the facts that are coming to light. They simply lack the professional guts to admit they were wrong when the world needed the truth. Sadly, this is very much part of a trend.

I am pleased that at least more and more print media outlets are now reconsidering what really happened a month ago. They certainly don’t have a balanced view of Russia’s position regarding this conflict, but at least they are distancing themselves from Saakashvili’s. This is a small step towards correction and commitment to the truth.

Saakashvili is on his way out. Something tells me he won’t get the Western media coverage he wants and expects. The West’s media loves winners and morally defensible heroes. The more we learn, the less Saakashvili is either.

Peter Lavelle, Russia Today

Editor, David Edwards
Media Lens: a very British Gatekeeper?

Medialens is a British website which aspires to view the British mainstream media with a critical eye and to monitor its output, "correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media," it claims.

For years now it has had a running exchange with the BBC about its heavily biased reporting, particularly on the issues of Iraq and Afghanistan.

From time to time, I have quoted Medialens on my blog and though I have no time for its editors, Messrs Cromwell and Edwards, the two Davids, with whom I have had differences, I have continued to support Medialens for its criticism of the Iraq war, its backing of Chávez and the South American revolution and its exposés of the blatantly propagandistic reportage of the BBC and other TV channels.

Over the last few days, Medialens and its subscribers have had a tremendous opportunity to launch an aggressive critique of the BBC over the recent nonsense of it's having to apologise to the Queen on reporting what to you and me was a pretty inconsequential matter (see article below). While the incident itself was a storm in a teacup the statements that have come out of the BBC and others, reported verbatim in my article, were certainly worthy of comment from Medialens and its subscribers.

The BBC's Head of News, Helen Boaden, a popular hate-figure of Medialens and its subscribers, has called for an in-house enquiry on earlier instances, going back to January 2005, where her staff feel that the BBC acted deceitfully. Ex-BBC Chairman and the present Chief Executive of Independent TV, Michael Grade, was widely reported as condemning recent practises by broadcasters and laying it on the line: the golden, cardinal rule, says Grade, is you don't deceive the listeners.

Too right, Michael. Any comments from Medialens, so far? Nope.

I was able to report verbatim the BBC's stramash in yesterday's article because I make a habit of recording the major newscasts of the day and monitoring them for exactly this kind of thing. I was myself once a Medialens contributor but the Editors seemed to have disapproved of my outspoken language, considered it bad for their image, and banned me twice.

My personal feeling is that they acted intolerantly and in an extremely heavy-handed manner. Far from the intemperate language I was accused of their real motive was always that of preserving, however falsely, an image of western Buddhist tolerance and non-violence. But the ends justified un-Buddhist means and, in order to maintain their public façade, they soon made me into a non-person. To this day, I remain 'radioactive' on their Message Board.

I knew that this tyranny would only get worse. Though tempted to retaliate on my blog and not to encourager les autres, I decided that there were more important issues to deal with and desisted. But I continued to keep an eye on their Message Board to see how others might be treated by these tyrants.

It wasn't surprising, therefore, to see that others too are being banned from their Message Board on the editors' whims. It seems that some good folk on the Board have now got so desperate that they are calling for a more democratic structure to replace the current regime of bullying.

Lost in their petty intrigues, the Editors of Medialens missed an excellent opportunity by not commenting on the recent BBC ruckus. More importantly, on Ms Boaden's decision to hold an in-house enquiry and on the significance of Michael Grade's comments. If I were still on their Message Board, it goes without saying I would have pointed this out. But I have no intention of creeping back in there under yet another pseudonym, only to experience the same sense of frustration and despair with what is, in the real world, nothing more than a talking-club of self-deluded, Oxbridge intellectuals.

Though I expect their intentions were honourable in first setting up such a media monitor, it is clear that it has never been more than a two-man operation with its subscribers giving it the semblance of appearing an open forum for discussion.

It is not.

The Medialens Message Board has its own peculiar tribalisms and a clear intolerance towards anything it might find to be politically incorrect. It is, sadly, more concerned with image and political expediencies than getting its hands dirty in the real world. In the USA, the owners of such an organisation would soon find themselves denounced as gate-keepers, i.e. a group deliberately set up to control and defuse controversies.

That is, in effect, what Medialens has become. However honourable were their early intentions, it is now a gate-keeper. And, in the case of 911, it has been not just a gate-keeper but, deciding the issue to be un-pc, has banned all discussion from its Message Boards.

How can anyone be expected to take such a group seriously when complacency and a pretentious tyranny are the order of the day?

There is a desperate need for groups who are committed to monitoring the lies of the mainstream media and attacking it when necessary. For, make no mistake about it, we are in the midst of a propaganda war in the West. A war which is an extension of the hot war being fought abroad by the same imperialists whose media-war we face daily at home.

If the editors of Medialens can't stand the heat then they should do the honest thing, admit to their subscribers that they've lost the plot and allow their subscribers the freedom to democratise and revamp Medialens.

If they cannnot countenance such humility, then they should shut shop. To continue as they are doing at present may pander to the egos of Messers Cromwell, Edwards and their apologists but, for the rest of us, Medialens is a deception which betrays all it supposedly stands for.

Effoff Dickhead!
Medialens on MSM-land's Royal Farewell to Quisling Bliar

"Interesting how the media switched from 'political analysis mode' to sort of 'royal/national occasion mode' - all smiles, they presented it as a patriotic celebration of the 'changing of the guard' rather than a moment to reflect on what this sociopathic monster has done to our country and to the world."

"And outside that little political-media clique, people are just seething at what he's done to Iraq - even the army."

Pro Patria Mori?

In William Shirer's epic, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Air Marshal Goering is quoted as having predicted that, "In thirty years time, Britain [would] be an overcrowded little island living on the glories of its past."

How right he was.

For weeks now, Brits have been force-fed glorified memories of an event which took place 25 years ago proving to the world that the British ruling classes cling on desperately to their imperial pretensions regardless of the price in blood that is invariably paid for it by their subjects.

Subjects, for in Britain there are no citizens, only the lowly subjects of Her Satanic Majesty, that notorious blood-sucker whose hidden and most influential hand still manipulates the death-machine of international monopoly capitalism and usury.

Governments, as the astute Tony Benn has observed quoted in an article below, use the Media to project the distorted version of reality which suits them. In Britain, it also uses the monarchy to promote a bluster of hollow patriotism in the manner described by an earlier commentator, Walter Bagehot, as a necessary tool of pomp and circumstance, bread and circuses, by which the masses are governed and kept in their place.

By promoting the disgraceful, modern-day colonialist adventure of the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas war the mainstream media (MSM) is playing to classic form, glorifying a sickening episode in which hundreds of young Brits and Argentinos died over a crop of rocks in the bleak South Atlantic. For weeks now we have heard nothing but blaring chauvinism, led as always by the BBC, on what a great job "our boys" did in liberating the hardy, Best-of-British Falklanders from the dastardly grip of that dago, Leopoldo Galtieri.

Of course, no mention is made of that other dictator, Margaret Thatcher (or 'Señora Torture' as she was aptly described by an Argentino mispronouncing her name), or the reasons behind her galloping patriotism and willingness to spill the blood of Britain's youth in a war which was a calculated attempt, on her part, to bully a weaker country into submission, claim victory and thereby bolster her badly-flagging electoral popularity.

Nor the fact that the disputed sovereignty of the Falkands/Malvinas dates back to 1833 when the British opportunistically seized the islands with its military might. These things are better left undiscussed. As is the uncomfortable contrast some have made since of the obviously racist interest the British Government had in coming to the rescue of a handful of white colonists 8000 miles away from the Motherland while, in the Indian Ocean, having expelled through threat and deceit another small group of dark-skinned people from the Chagos Islands.

There is no comparison, the British Government would maintain. After all, the Chagos Islanders were descendants of indentured labour (legal colonial slavery) whereas the Falklanders were authentic colonists (colonizers). And besides which, the Big White Father in Washington had made it known that he wished to acquire the Chagos Islands, lock stock and barrel, in order to build a nuclear strategic base on Diego Garcia (called Fantasy Island by its Yankee usurpers) to fight the good fight for Democracy-'n'-Freedom and occasional bomb the shit out of uppity rag-heads in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.

Reality doesn't bear looking at too closely. It never has. Especially the vicious, murdering lies behind what is called patriotism, that perpetuator of paternalism and an inherited, psychopathic Jewish thunder-god. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, it is sweet and seemly to die for one's country. Evidently, the BBC, the British MSM, the Government and the Royal spokesperson, Prince Andrew, on TV for those miserable parasites called the monarchy, still insist it to be so.

But let me tell you of an alternative, personal version to the official glorification of that episode of tribal blood-letting.

Back in 1982, I was living in south Oxfordshire, the heart of Tory-land, out-of-work together with the rest of Thatcher's marginalized millions, scraping a living out of a mixture of substitute teaching and government welfare, fathering a child and two step-children and campaigning daily against the Reagan/Thatcher Arms Race and the Cruise missiles at Greenham Common.

Then suddenly came the Falklands/Malvinas crisis. Instead of dealing with it peacefully through the United Nations, as she could have done, Thatcher decided to live out her pretensions of being a latter-day Boadicea, offering the blood-sacrifice of British youth in yet another opportunist war ('yet another' because it was a repeat of how the Falklands were originally seized).

Hurriedly, I photocopied a batch of hand-bills which had written across them, Ceasefire Now!, drove across town and plastered them wherever I could. On inspection twenty-four hours later, I discovered them all to have been torn down. Such was the fever of jingoism that had infected every little market-town through Her Satanic Majesty's land. So, determined not to be outdone, I printed double the number of hand-bills and, this time, stuck them with a much stronger glue. The next day, with satisfaction, I noted that many of the posters were still up. But such was the frenzied anger of our local patriots, you could see where they had attempted to scratch down the offending posters, leaving behind a trail of claw-marks.

To make it worse, I developed the measles and had to be put in quarantine in the living room next to the TV. So I had very little else to do but to watch the entire playing out of the Falklands war-movie from start to finish. Every time a British battle-ship was sunk by the Argentinos, I cheered traitorously, "teach the British colonialists a lesson!" Later on, I discovered that I was not alone. Many other Brits opposing Thatcher's war had done the same.

One interesting aspect of the media show which accompanied the adventure in the South Atlantic was the manner in which the War Office (aka Ministry of Defence) censored all TV reports by running a thick cable from the TV cameras to caravans installed outside Downing Street where all reports would be monitored and adjusted to Government requirements. Now called 'embedding' that process of censorship and government-sanctioned propaganda has been developed to a fine art both in Britain and the USA.

Sadly, Thatcher won and by doing so condemned her subjects to 15 more years of penal servitude. A great victory march was organized in Portsmouth and the patriots gave themselves to an orgy of chauvinism, booze and self-degradation. One of the memories of that celebration of pomp and circumstance were the numbers of one-legged war-wounded. How sad, these sheep who, over and over ad nauseam so easily go to their slaughter!

At what was really nothing more than a football match where murder was sanctioned.

My other memories of that war are of the the young lad from a school in which I taught who had been sent out, fresh from training to fight, never to return. I felt the paternal feeling one develops, as a teacher, for one's charges and, from that time onward harbour a cold contempt for all the Thatchers and the Blairs who turn our planet into a hell on earth.

Today, I hear that still the veterans of that war continue to suffer the after-effects. And that far more have died since by their own hands than ever did in the Falkands/Malvinas. So much for all the filth and subliminal poison being pumped out by the whores of the MSM.

THAT is the reality of pro patria mori.

MALVINAS BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY


Link

This story now at Bellaciao and OpEdNews.com