I just figured out what’s going on here. Trump thought he could use Wanzhou as a strong arm bargaining chip on the trade impasse with China. This is something Americans accuse dictators of doing, and Canada was a party to this???

Posted by: Circe | Dec 6 2018 21:42 utc | 103

Grieved @ 100 –
Here is some collateral on Zen Master Xi.
Yes of course. This is fitting. Buddha too rejected his family’s immense wealth and set off on his search for enlightenment and daily alms begging….

Mr Xi’s other relatives have built an enormous empire. The investments are hidden from public view in multiple holding companies, but were identified among thousands of pages of regulatory findings, Bloomberg said.
The family’s interests include a 1.83 billion yuan (£188 million) share of the assets of Shenzhen Yuanwei, a property investment company, according to a filing from December 2011.
Other companies in the same group, wholly owned by the family, have assets of at least 539.3 million yuan. They also have an indirect 18 per cent stake in Jiangxi Rare Earth & Rare Metals Tungsten Group, whose assets are worth some £1.1 billion.
Another 3.17 million yuan investment in Beijing’s Hiconics Drive Technology company, made in 2009, is now worth 128.4 million yuan. The sums do not account for liabilities and consequently do not reflect the net worth of the family.
The family also owns a villa in Hong Kong worth £20 million and another six properties in the former British colony with an estimated value of £15.4 million. The Chinese Foreign ministry declined to comment on the revelations.
Most of the traceable fortune is held by Mr Xi’s older sister, Qi Qiaoqiao, 63, her husband Deng Jiagui, 61, and her daughter Zhang Yannan, 33. However, a brother-in-law, Wu Long, ran New Postcom Equipment Co, which has won hundreds of millions of yuan in contracts from state-owned China Mobile.
No assets were traced to Mr Xi himself, his wife Peng Liyuan, or their daughter. There is also no indication that Mr Xi helped to advance his relatives’ business, or of any wrongdoing by Mr Xi or his family, Bloomberg said.
However, the Chinese authorities were quick to censor the report, blocking Bloomberg’s website from view on the mainland.

Posted by: donkeytale | Dec 6 2018 22:13 utc | 105

From the US perspective intellectual property rights is one of their key objectives in any trade agreement. Theft is a big issue. Some of it do to mandatory JV requirements in certain industries which gives the local partner access to tech that is stolen (sold to Chinese competitor) or transferred legally. A fully owned enterprise would face less risk, but thats not possible in every industry.
Then there are products China buys from the West that are simply copied using reverse engineering. Enforcement of IP has been difficult partly due to court bias for plaintiffs in local jurisdictions and a weak discovery process provide obstacles to collecting evidence before trial.
Any trade agreement will improve IP enforcement and reduce requirement for JV investment.
The arrest of the Hwawei CFO just reinforced what US expects.
China owes the US a lot. If the US and their puppets treated China like other communist/socialist countries when it comes to trade like the FSU, Cuba, Iran,North Korea, Venezuela they would not have more billionaire oligarchs than the US has, and its doubtful their economy is developed to anywhere near what it is today. Instead they gave China MFN after Tiananmen at a time when the FSU folded up and they no longer needed to play the China card. I suspect China is the lab where the model for the future world government is being developed. Their surveillance and social control systems are the envy of Global Elites who still have to pay lip service to rights given in their countries constitutions (which will soon be scrapped given a big enough crisis they engineer).
So China vs US is just more Fake Wrestling IMO. US will get some IP protection in the end. Afterall, the Trump Trademark is valuable and must be protected. Trump is very happy China recognized his trademark under Chinese law. No Fake Trump Hotels in China. And China will continue their electronic products have backdoors that allow the NSA easy access to snoop on us while giving them plausible deniability(China did it).

Posted by: Pft | Dec 6 2018 22:43 utc | 107

The discussion about US-Chinese trade leaves out a crucial aspect: Russia.
Yes, Chinese were taking advantage but that didn’t matter to TPTB as long as US and European companies were making huge profits by employing cheap Chinese labor.
It all started out as US splitting Russia and China in the 70’s by offering China a “peaceful rise”. When the US-led West won the Cold War in 1991, it was only a matter of time before China would be isolated. So Chinese business shenanigans were allowed to continue (though not ignored).
But a strange thing happened. The Bear survived the winter and, though severely weakened, fought off the Western capitalist vultures. And, having been repeatedly kicked while it was down, the Bear found a new friend – the Chinese dragon.
By 2013-14 the West realized their profound error. The initial reaction was to accelerate their actions against Russia. This included demonizing Putin and strange, twisted propaganda like claiming that Russia is merely an oil station while ALSO claiming that Putin wants to build a new Russian empire (together, these two claims make no sense).
USA is NOT responding to China as an errant trade partner, they are responding to China as a military threat and strategic competitor. The Western strategic clusterf*ck that made this possible is so massive that no political leader will tell the people the embarrassing truth: we did this to ourselves. It threatens to upend the “World Order” that was assumed to be well established. Kissinger calls it a “very very grave” situation.
Who will pay for the greed, hubris, and incompetence of the pampered elite? YOU and yours and the rest of the peasantry as long as they can be kept dumb and fearful.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Dec 6 2018 23:06 utc | 109

Posted by: james | Dec 6, 2018 12:33:18 PM | 71
This nonsense reminds me of the sort of tosh the world’s biggest dope pushers the New York based Sackler family (inventor/purveyors of Oxycontin & its morphine analogue MSContin) use when confronted with the numbers of humans (tens of thousands every year) killed by their ‘products’.
Chinese tech companies stole nothing the greedy amerikans wanted access to China’s markets knowing full well that to do so they would need to set up a joint venture and provide access to their products. There is nothing unusual in this, once it was a very common business practice used by amerika in most markets. eg One of my mates as a youngfella was a fellow who was only in Aotearoa because his dad was sent there by 3M to set up a joint kiwi amerikan 3M operation.
As corporate amerika became more powerful they pulled back from such arrangements and used their financial power to force monopolies on the world – except for China who refused to brook such nonsense.
Anyway the amerikan corporations had a tough time getting China to play ball but a billion customers, their greed won out and they willingly established joint operations and handed tech over to that operation. No one made them, but now they want to have their cake and eat it, their claims of IP piracy are nonsense most of us can remember how ridiculous apple behaved when samsung did a better job of making phone and tablet tech. Apple tried to sue samsung all over the world and lost out because Koreans hadn’t stole jacksh1t.
About the only law suit to get up was one in the same Northern California jurisdiction as Apple HQ, where jobs & Co claimed that because Samsung had designed their 10.1 tablet as a white rectangle with rounded corners, they stole the idea from them.
Ridiculous – every tablet ever made including numerous examples manufactured long before jobs even thought about such things, is a rectangle with rounded corners.
No one stole anything for another simple reason one which demonstrates exactly how corrupt the very notion of algorithms being private property is.
That is that mathematics is a process of evolution, every ‘advance’ stands on the shoulders of other mathematicians going back thousands of years through China, Islamic Spain, Rome and Greece to Egypt and further, yet the descendants of those great mathematicians without whom none of these advances could have been made don’t cop a brass razoo, anly amerikan corporations are entitled to a piece of the pie.
If there is theft going on it is amerika committing the robbery.
Bur as I pointed out earlier, this is not about that, IP is just an excuse to try and force Huawei to give NSA/CIA access to Huawei communications.
I really really hope that amerika loses even tho China has recently been up to some very dodgy stuff in aotearoa. Maybe I’ll post about that someday – how Chinese socialism prefers to recruit, suborn & own conservative politicians overseas, illegally funding the tory pols to victory in preference to doing business with lefty administrations.
The reason I back Huawei in this extends beyond natural justice and China keeping Huawei out of the hands of 5 eyes is mos def natural justice, into issues of privacy for citizens of western capitalist states.
It is simple really; if anyone has to spy on communications, and no one has ever proved that the Chinese state can access Huawei, unlike CISCO gear which Snowden demonstrated was a tool of the NSA, I and most people I know, much prefer the notion of some Chinese kid with little understanding of colloquial english and less interest in my day to day business do it, than some sharpie careerist wannabe ‘analyst’ based in Aotearoa, Canberra or Maryland who would sell me and my friends down the river quicker than a rat up a drainpipe, if it meant he might get to go up one grade in the civil service rankings for doing so.
As for gathering real secrets – anyone who has a real secret and communicates it on any tech en clair, that is the person who gave up the secret not the tech company, especially not a tech company which is trying as hard as Huawei does to keep communications on its products confidential.
amerikan astro turfers, spruikers and trolls will pump out terabytes of tosh about this but like all truths the reality is simple, amerika has been hoist on its own petard of greed & now that is happening they are squealing, whining and thrashing around like the stuck pigs which they are.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Dec 6 2018 23:27 utc | 111

@110 If it comes down to a choice between Washington and Beijing Canada will always choose Washington. It’s not even a choice. I wouldn’t want to be a Canadian business person in China if the extradition goes through.

Posted by: dh | Dec 6 2018 23:37 utc | 113

@113 Seems to me most people here have figured out what’s going on. Trade deals are just what we see on the surface. That said Trump and Xi either reach an agreement on trade or they don’t. My guess is they will. Unless of course Trump makes the Spratleys part of the deal in which case things will get much much worse.

Posted by: dh | Dec 6 2018 23:43 utc | 115

An important interview which describes Washington corruption is here. (h/t Carlton Meyer)

Posted by: Don Bacon | Dec 7 2018 0:15 utc | 117

Patrick Armstrong provides an excellent Russia sitrep.
I especially like his summary about Mike Flynn and this parenthetical remark: His real crime, of course, was revealing Obama’s and that is why he had to be taken out first.
Anyone that recognizes the continuity of US government policy between Clinton, Bush, Obama, should (by now) recognize that Trump is no different.
Flynn is essentially a whistle-blower. Was he set up? His work and his actions don’t indicate any nefarious intent other than to hedge his bets given media reports that Hillary was likely to win the Presidency:

Mr. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, registered as a lobbyist last year [2016] but did not file papers with the Justice Department registering as a foreign agent, providing a fuller understanding of his role, until Tuesday. While he did not work directly for the Turkish government, the firm that hired him, Inovo, is owned by a Turkish-American businessman with links to leaders in Ankara and asked him to work on an issue important to the government.
The White House said that Mr. Trump did not know that Mr. Flynn was acting as a foreign agent when Mr. Trump appointed him national security adviser, a position that gave him access to classified meetings and materials. But a person briefed on the matter, who insisted on anonymity to describe private conversations, said Mr. Flynn’s lawyer contacted a lawyer for Mr. Trump’s transition team before the inauguration to ask whether Mr. Flynn should register given his work for Inovo.
The transition lawyer offered no advice, saying it was up to Mr. Flynn. After the inauguration, the person said, Mr. Flynn and his lawyer each raised it again with a White House lawyer, only to be told once more it was up to him. Mr. Flynn had no comment on Friday. His lawyer wrote the Justice Department that Mr. Flynn decided to register retroactively “to eliminate any potential doubt.”
The White House said its lawyer considered it a private decision and saw no reason to intervene. “It’s not a question of raising a red flag,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary. “It’s a question of whether or not they gave him the advice that they are supposed to, which is it is not up to them to make decisions as to what you need to do or not do.”
. . .
On behalf of his firm, the Flynn Intel Group, Mr. Flynn signed a contract on Aug. 9 with Inovo, a Dutch firm owned by Ekim Alptekin, the chairman of the Turkish-American Business Council. Mr. Flynn’s firm was to receive $600,000 for 90 days of work [ending on the day of the Presidential election – November 8th?].
. . .
The forms filed this week indicate that Mr. Flynn’s firm was “to perform investigative research” on Mr. Gulen and “develop a short film piece on the results of its investigation.” In the end, the video was never completed, and Mr. Flynn’s firm received $530,000 before the contract terminated in November. But on Election Day, Mr. Flynn published an op-ed article in The Hill, a newspaper serving Congress, calling Mr. Gulen “a shady Islamic mullah” and “radical Islamist.”
. . .
This week, Mr. Alptekin disputed the notion that he hired Mr. Flynn to influence the next president. “When I engaged Flynn Co. polls showed 85% likelihood of Hillary winning,” he wrote on Twitter after the filings. “If intention was to lobby USG I would have hired Podesta like Gulen,” he added, referring to the United States government and Tony Podesta, a prominent Washington lobbyist and brother of John D. Podesta, who was Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman.
. . .
The firm [The Flynn Group] was shuttered after the election when Mr. Flynn was headed for the White House.

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
What Flynn did was shady and he should’ve been more careful (given the animosity directed at him by the Obama Administration and intelligence agencies). Flynn got a big pay day but was careful to structure it so that his assignment would end before Trump became the President-elect and his “research” deliverables didn’t include lobbying of officials. And he sought guidance on registering as a foreign agent showing that he wasn’t secretive about his activities.
There is no allegation (that I know of) that Flynn acted to advance Turkish interests AFTER the election. His registration as a foreign agent was only in relation to the work he did from August 9 – November 8 as the Times acknowledges – though only in passing (“given his work for Inovo”).

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Dec 7 2018 0:35 utc | 119

The Intel Community was patient in waiting to get Michael Flynn, and they moved on it. Flynn was an honest man — not allowed.
…from the files:
>In 2012 Flynn, now promoted to lieutenant general, was appointed to run the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
>2014: Michael T. Flynn is expected to end his tenure as DIA director this summer, about a year before he was scheduled to depart
> The US didn’t interfere with the rise of anti-government jihadist groups in Syria that finally degenerated into Islamic State, claims the former head of America’s Defense Intelligence Agency, backing a secret 2012 memo predicting their rise.
An interview with retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), given to Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan, confirms earlier suspicions that Washington was monitoring jihadist groups emerging as opposition in Syria.

2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document:
West will facilitate rise of Islamic State “in order to isolate the Syrian regime”
Astoundingly, the newly declassified report states that for “THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…”.The DIA report, formerly classified “SECRET//NOFORN” and dated August 12, 2012, was circulated widely among various government agencies, including CENTCOM, the CIA, FBI, DHS, NGA, State Dept., and many others.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Dec 7 2018 1:45 utc | 121

donkeytail 105
its not surprising that donkey the misdirection agent should focus on an alleged nepotism of Xi, from the same dubious source that peddle that unsubstantiated Chinese spy wonder chip on US servers, which was categorically denied by Apple etc.
Im not saying this ‘expose’ on Xi is necessarily false, but I wonder what’s donkey’s point,
So it justify fukus international outlaw behavior,…?
viz,
To apply illegal economic sanction, in classic NIxon/Kissinger style, to make a country scream for mercy ?
To illegally arrest and extradict any ‘suspect’ in third country over alleged violation of the illegal sanction on Iran ?
I wonder if donkey also endorse fukus extra territorial and extra judicial executions in third country of ‘terrorist suspects’ ?

Posted by: denk | Dec 7 2018 2:04 utc | 123

@104
You’re going to find this hard to believe, but when I came to that conclusion in 103, I hadn’t even seen @62! Glad to know you all see what’s going on here.
This means there’s no denying Trump knew she would be arrested when he was meeting with Xi in Argentina. I’m sick of Trump’s men i.e. Bolton and Navarro lying through their teeth pretending he knew nothing with a staight face. American media are so so stupid.
If Trump starts resorting to these strong arm dictator tactics, then it’ll be fair game for everyone else to do the same. He’s opened a pandora’s box. This is really dirty. I see this turning into more than a trade war once she’s extradited. The Chinese are calling it a kidnapping, and hostage taking.
I wonder how Xi is going to handle this? Trump stabbed him in the back in Argentina. This is going to escalate.

Posted by: Circe | Dec 7 2018 2:31 utc | 125

@109,119

USA is NOT responding to China as an errant trade partner, they are responding to China as a military threat and strategic competitor. The Western strategic clusterf*ck that made this possible is so massive that no political leader will tell the people the embarrassing truth: we did this to ourselves. It threatens to upend the “World Order” that was assumed to be well established. Kissinger calls it a “very very grave” situation.

@121
…although the power structure is now shifting in a way where the western financial system that pushed this, now have to resort to war to sustain it.
Great points.
This discussion is so relevant to the arrest of Weng Wanzhou, because this incident demonstrates just how desperate Trump and co. are to rein in China’s expansion. It’s a desperate act by a desperate bully trying to hold on to power by any means. While the U.S. was bogged down and heavily distracted with Zionist regime change wars, China was growing by leaps and bounds and the U.S. was getting more and more heavily into debt with its foolish pursuit of hegemony in the Middle East. So what happened is that now the dragon is on the doorstep. It’s kind of like climate change, another powerful force that’s closing in that the U.S. is totally unprepared for.
I agree with both of you. It’s true that the Empire (led by the 1%) will have to resort to war as it’s their solution for everything and they’ll use all kinds of tyranny to provoke and false flag to create a legitimate excuse for such war. Kissinger, a man I totally detest, is shrewd enough to recognize the situation for exactly what it is. Never, since WWII has the U.S. been confronted with such an urgent (as in closing in), unprecedented and enigmatic threat to its power. This situation could actually be a godsend for Iran that’s in the Empire’s crosshairs if China starts to become the more pressing target. We’ll see.
Anyway, let’s see what Xi does to counter Trump’s desperate move to use a kidnapped Chinese exec as leverage to strong arm China into submission.

Posted by: Circe | Dec 7 2018 4:27 utc | 127

Donkeytale @ 105: So Xi Mingze studies at Harvard University under a “pseudonym”? Why does that not surprise me? Plenty of Mainland Chinese who study or work overseas adopt Western names because their own names are hard for Westerners to pronounce or they just like the unexpected opportunity to give themselves a name.
About 1 billion people have about 200 surnames to use and while personal names should be as individual as possible, Chinese parents can be as lazy as Western parents in following the herd and choosing the most popular names or the most common names. So it’s not unusual for thousands of people to share the same name.
The likes of the London Daily Telegraph and other newspapers eagerly sniffing out Xi Jinping and his family’s secret bank accounts might do well to remember that fact.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/04/26/why-do-so-many-chinese-people-share-the-same-name/

Posted by: Jen | Dec 7 2018 6:21 utc | 129

don bacon and others.. you might enjoy caitlin johnstones comments on heather nauerts new role..
Nikki Haley To Be Replaced By Blonde Version Of Nikki Haley
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/12/07/nikki-haley-to-be-replaced-by-blonde-version-of-nikki-haley/

Posted by: james | Dec 7 2018 7:54 utc | 131

Jen – You choose to ignore the hundreds of millions (maybe billions, I didn’t add it all up) owned by Xi’s family and focus instead on the mostly irrelevant fact that his daughter used a pseudonym to attend Harvard? I agree it seemed to be gratuitouse placed next to the oligarchic wealth somehow generated coincidentally by Xi’s sister and bro-in-law.
Denk – I responded tongue-in-cheek to Grieve’s opinion that Xi is something of a profound Buddhist. I used facts, which you seem to agree are accurate, or at least don’t deny, even as you attempt to kill the messenger of these facts. Then you go off accusing me through passive/aggressive questions naming the possible bad intent behind my comment?
Yet I’m the one guilty of misdirection? Lol
I know this is very hard to understand when you have been taught not to believe your eyes, but sometimes a donkey is just a funny looking small horse-like animal…and the global oligarchs include even Buddhist communists among all those “rotten” jews, Christians, Hindus and Muslims we all know and hate.

Posted by: donkeytale | Dec 7 2018 14:12 utc | 133

@ james 131
“nikki-haley-to-be-replaced-by-blonde-version-of-nikki-haley”
No. It’s worse than that.
>HN:… serving as Spokesperson for the United States Department of State since April 24, 2017, appointed by President Donald Trump. She is a former ABC News correspondent as well as a past news presenter on the Fox News program Fox & Friends.
>NH: . . A Republican, she served as the 116th Governor of South Carolina and is a former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Dec 7 2018 15:00 utc | 135

Anti-Assad and Anti-Putin theme in new DC comic,
https://www.reddit.com/r/Russophobic/comments/a3qqah/superman_comics_showing_victim_of_russian_puppet/

Posted by: Zanon | Dec 7 2018 15:36 utc | 137

@100
As far as I can see, there is no evidence whatsoever for Galtung’s view that “Xi Jinping is a deeply conscientious Buddhist”, nor have I ever imagine any actual Chinese commentator finding the idea anything other than fantasy. I suppose the view is based on the unexamined Western assumption that all moral views and beliefs–including political philosophies–must be based on some religious foundation deep down, and the misconception that China is a “Buddhist country”. To call Xi a Daoist might even be somewhat more plausible (though probably still not accurate.)

Posted by: Chinese American | Dec 7 2018 16:13 utc | 139

@ Debs and Sasha : Thanks for the views on Huawei
@ James on intellectual Property
As I commented a couple of weeks or so ago, the Western elite pretend that Intellectual Property is a natural law that stands morally on its own, but in reality it is an utterly artificial construct that bears no relation to natural law whatsoever.
Intellectual “Property” is not property at all, except to the extent that it is coopted by elitist laws designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many – you can take this claim as pretty much a definition of theft. If you take as your own that which rightly belongs to nature, the commons, thereby denying it to others, that is outright theft.
The privilege of patent was first awarded by European kings several hundred years ago (King Charles/James of Britain period? Can’t remember exactly) and it gave inventors commercial advantages in return for certain responsibilities – commercial protections that helped raise investment, incentivise development, and create a more effective financial environment for development. It had certain advantages for the common good, and there were many limits to the restrictions, practical or otherwise. What was patented in England, for example, could be freely copied in France, and there were tight restrictions on what was allowed to be patented. So whilst it was taking something which belonged to the commons for private ownership, there was a balancing compensatory factor which returned some benefits to the commons.
In more recent times the ownership of intellectual property has been concentrated in the global elite to an astronomical degree, such as to present a massive threat to the interests of the commons – in other words there is no longer any viable interest for the commons in having the patent information privately owned, to compensate for the ‘theft’ from common ownership. Furthermore the scope of intellectual property has been so vastly broadened over the last 30 to 40 years that many things are today being grabbed by the elite (allegedly as a new ‘invention’) that were explicitly and totally excluded from patentability just 30 to 40 years ago. Examples include natural medicines extracted from plants that have been recorded, used and written about for hundreds or thousands of years. This is outright theft, and the main victims of that particular example are tropical countries because they have more biological diversity, and have long and rich non-western medical traditions such as Indian/Sri Lankan/Chinese medical traditions with a rich knowledge of biomedicine. In Sri Lanka the theft of intellectual property means (strictly illegal) attempts by Western pharmaceuticals to “patent” Sri Lankan medical plants!
I don’t know to what extent the changes in intellectual property law and treaties can be claimed to be “legal” in a self-serving sense, but my suspicion has long been that at least some of the changes are probably illegal in a strict judicial sense (i.e. that they contradict fundamental principles and are therefore legally invalid).
Knowledge is fundamentally part of the commons – naturally and morally in common ownership. According to natural law it cannot be privately owned. Any law that purports to assign private ownership of knowledge is not natural law it is arbitrary law, and it has no moral standing. In order for it to be morally taken from the commons, ther must at least be a counterbalancing benefit granted to the comons – where this counterbalancing benefit is absent, it is a theft from the commons.
Most people would consider that “Laws” announced by Jihadis in Syria for the territory they control are illegitimate, especially where they contradict principles fundamentally held to be sacrosanct (and this is despite the fact that the most necessary and basic foundation for the promulgation of laws is the control of territory), because the Jihadi control of the territory itself is illegitimate. But when legally constituted states promulgate laws that disproportionately extort the rights of the commons without compensation, those laws can on the basis of “natural law” be denounced as illegitimate and void.
The more the elite abuse their capability to exploit the commons, and the more they deny the commons a rightful compenation, the more likely it is that their laws will be deemed to be illegitimate and void.
Natural law transcends all other law.

Posted by: BM | Dec 7 2018 16:36 utc | 141

@ Chinese American | Dec 7, 2018 11:13:09 AM | 139
In this forum previously I offered the view based on my limited understanding that Xi is a Confucian, and that his ‘win win’ policy exemplifies that. I would be interested to know what you thought of that?

Posted by: Ross | Dec 7 2018 16:48 utc | 143

Nice one….closing postal service oligarchs want privatised and whose stock shares in alternates would bump from closures.
If yankee public were not codependent Stockholm Syndrome bots, they would ALL stay home on National War Criminal Day!

Posted by: slit | Dec 7 2018 17:13 utc | 145

heather can learn haleys,sam powers,or condis detours.

Posted by: dahoit | Dec 7 2018 17:55 utc | 147

okay.. now my post is in the cue!! my response to everyone will have to wait!!

Posted by: james | Dec 7 2018 18:01 utc | 149

@149 Noirette
Ramin Mazaheri, who reports for PressTV and has been living in France for ten years, today published a good overall perspective on these events:
France’s Yellow Vests: It’s just 1 protest…which has lasted 8 years
He shows that this is not an isolated event, and certainly not revolving around the diesel tax. Rather, it’s a continuation of protests that have been ongoing for 8 years. Mazaheri is a sympathetic journalist, a socialist, and definitely on the side of the oppressed. Even so, he speculates on whether the French will continue their momentum or let this particular wave break. No one knows.
The fact that Macron’s police will drop the hammer on the protest on Saturday is not in itself a crushing blow, it seems from Mazaheri’s article. This violence happens all the time. The question yet remains, will this movement continue? And Saturday may not provide the answer.

Posted by: Grieved | Dec 7 2018 18:17 utc | 151

@146 Don Bacon – “Categorizing people in any way is usually a mistake.”
I agree. Shoigu is a Buddhist, while Putin is Orthodox Christian. Which one loves children more, or best keeps Russia safe?
In my comment at #100, I was curious to find that Xi might be not only Buddhist (which would not be a surprise in China), but that he might be profoundly serious in his Buddhist thought system. I’m familiar with that thought system, and this would say a lot about the man – although not his country or its policies – if it is the case.
The operative word here is “might”. I mentioned that I would keep an eye out for collateral, and so I shall. If I find anything useful, this forum will be the first place I’ll come to share it.
~~
Personally I thought the point about the US snipers was the more compelling, but it was obscured by this inconsequential tangent about Xi. I watched it happen and chose not to bite. I note that b has just banned two “obscuration actors” in the latest thread. We can only hope he keeps this up.

Posted by: Grieved | Dec 7 2018 18:42 utc | 153

To get an idea about the mood in France one needs to listen to that
https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/le-telephone-sonne/le-telephone-sonne-07-decembre-2018
https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/du-grain-a-moudre/du-grain-a-moudre-du-vendredi-07-decembre-2018
Views of both the people and the intelligentsia at the moment.
They seem to agree on one thing: “Macron must go!!!”

Posted by: Mina | Dec 7 2018 20:12 utc | 155

@154 Noirette – “…college degrees! (Not a recommendation.)”
From you I’ll take it all. You were here in this forum long before I ever was.
As for college, I’m with Bob Dylan. I got this story second-hand (so may not be true), but he was asked in one of the early interviews if he had been to university.
Dylan replied: “Yeah, I been there. I seen what they do there. I don’t want no part of that.”

Posted by: Grieved | Dec 7 2018 23:17 utc | 157

It looks like the yellow vests protests are going to continue to heat up. Good for them. It looks as though it isn’t of the same laziness and mixed messages that comprised Occupy and which ended up alienating large swaths of potential supporters.
It appears that some of the demands include stipulations relating to unfettered migration and the future protection of France’s cultural homogeneity.
It appears to be a nationalist reawakening that is also desperately needed to finally sweep out the duopoly in this country.
Will those here who recoil at the notion of nationalism look beyond this obvious fact that France is ahead of the curve? Or will they keep calling it by another name?

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Dec 8 2018 5:16 utc | 159

james 130
re my mention of Ian Fleming’s
law of probability ?
Once is accident…..

Posted by: denk | Dec 8 2018 15:27 utc | 161

@162 denk… i tend to agree with you fwiw…

Posted by: james | Dec 8 2018 18:04 utc | 163