MoA - Anti-China Cult Gets U.S. Government Money - Runs Large Pro-Trump Ad Campaign

August 21, 2019

Anti-China Cult Gets U.S. Government Money - Runs Large Pro-Trump Ad Campaign

Falun Gong is a cult which claims to have millions of followers. It was founded in China by Li Hongzhi who thinks of himself as a higher being. Falun Gong mixes some Taoism and Buddhism with nutty ideas, conservative politics and strong anti-communism:

Some of Mr Li's pronouncements are certainly unconventional, some would say just plain strange.
He believes aliens walk the Earth and he has reportedly said he can walk through walls and make himself invisible.

Mr Li says that he is a being from from a higher level who has come to help humankind from the destruction it could face as the result of rampant evil.

In 1999 the cult attempted to gain political power in China. The government shut it down for pushing its followers to not use medical therapies. Li Hongzhi and some of his followers moved to the United States. As the cult is strongly anti-communist the U.S. government used it to put pressure on China. Some institutions and companies related to Falun Gong are openly funded with U.S. government money.

The main media outlet of the Falun Gong organization is the Epoch Times. NBC reports of its astonishing growth as a pro-Trump social media force:

By the numbers, there is no bigger advocate of President Donald Trump on Facebook than The Epoch Times.
The small New York-based nonprofit news outlet has spent more than $1.5 million on about 11,000 pro-Trump advertisements in the last six months, according to data from Facebook’s advertising archive — more than any organization outside of the Trump campaign itself, and more than most Democratic presidential candidates have spent on their own campaigns.

Those video ads — in which unidentified spokespeople thumb through a newspaper to praise Trump, peddle conspiracy theories about the “Deep State,” and criticize “fake news” media — strike a familiar tone in the online conservative news ecosystem. The Epoch Times looks like many of the conservative outlets that have gained followings in recent years.
...
In April, at the height of its ad spending, videos from the Epoch Media Group, which includes The Epoch Times and digital video outlet New Tang Dynasty, or NTD, combined for around 3 billion views on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, ranking 11th among all video creators across platforms and outranking every other traditional news publisher.
...
The Epoch Times brought in $8.1 million in revenue in 2017 — double what it had the previous year — and reported spending $7.2 million on “printing newspaper and creating web and media programs.” Most of its revenue comes from advertising and “web and media income,” according to the group’s annual tax filings, while individual donations and subscriptions to the paper make up less than 10 percent of its revenue.

New Tang Dynasty’s 2017 revenue, according to IRS records, was $18 million, a 150 percent increase over the year before. It spent $16.2 million.

The NBC report says it is not clear where the "web and media" money that gets invested in pro-Trump advertisement actually comes from.

Falung Gong members in Taipei

source - bigger

Here is a hunch. What NBC does not mention is that Falun Gong is a U.S. anti-China asset. The Bush/Cheney administration used the Falun Gong to intentionally embarrass China's then President Hu Jintao when he visited Washington:

PRC President Hu Jintao had the misfortune of visiting Washington in 2006, when Vice President Cheney and his militant faction were riding high. China's role as an impediment to Bush administration policies on Iran as well as North Korea did not make for a particularly hospitable environment for Hu's visit.
...
The capper to the disastrous visit was the outburst during Hu’s speech on the White House lawn by Dr Wang Wenyi of the Falun Gong spiritual practice movement, who gained access to the speech as a credentialed correspondence.
...
Ming Pao reported more categorically that Dr. Wang declaimed in a piercing voice, shouting exhortations such as “Heaven will destroy the Chinese Communists”, “Leave the Party”, “10 million heroes have left the party, when will you leave?”, “Judge Jiang Zemin, Luo Gan, Zhou Yongkang” and “Falun Practice is Great”.
The revelation that the White House had granted Dr. Wang a temporary press pass in the name of the Epoch Times probably did not elicit a forgiving shrug from the Chinese government.
...
Dr. Wang was not a journalist by profession. She was a pathologist, and the lead researcher on Falun Gong's hot-button issue--the alleged vivisection of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese government at a facility in Shenyang, and the sale of their organs for transplant purposes.

And, beyond Falun Gong’s well-known hostility to the Chinese Communist Party and Dr. Wang’s central role in Falung Gong’s most impassioned crusade against the Chinese regime, her prior personal history of confronting Hu Jintao was a matter of public record.

The Secret Service is usually quick in removing hecklers from official White House events. It made no effort to remove Dr. Wang during President Hu's speech.

Yasha Levine documents in his book Surveillance Valley that the U.S. government built and uses the Internet as a weapon. Falun Gong plays a role in that.

At least some parts of the Falun Gong organization are financed by the U.S. government through the Internet Freedom program run by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). The USAGM/BBG budget for 2018 was $804 million.

A 2011 report (pdf) by the minority of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee attacked the State Department for too friendly behavior towards China:

From Fiscal Year 2008 to 2010, Congress provided some $50 million in funding to assist in Internet Freedom. As of January 2011, the State Department had obligated less than $20 million, of which little went to Internet Censorship Circumvention Technology (ICCT).
...
Some of the most sophisticated ICCT software is being developed by two U.S. companies, whose founders fled China to escape persecution for being members of Falun Gong. Their software was initially designed to allow fellow Falun Gong practitioners in China (whom Beijing authorities continue to prosecute, harass and imprison) to circumvent the Great Firewall by enabling their users to surf the Web as if they were in the U.S. or other “Internet friendly” nations via a combination of Proxy Websites and Virtual Private Networks. However, both DIT and UltraReach soon found their products being used by democracy activists and ordinary citizens to circumvent Internet censorship in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Burma and Vietnam –[...] Congress has responded by appropriating some $50 million to the State Department to support Internet freedom: FY2008 $14.8 Million; FY2009 $5 Million; FY2010 $30 Million

A footnote confirms that the Falun Gong companies received part of that money through the BBG:

Of the FY2009 Internet Freedom funding, the BBG received $1.5 Million. The BBG promptly used to contract with DIT to expand its Freegate software operations for some $600,000 and with UltraReach for $840,000.

DIT or Dynamic Internet Technology is run by one Bill Xia. In a 2006 Businessweek portrait he confirms that he is a Falun Gong member. The DIT website lists only four customers: the Falun Gong's Epoch Times, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and the New York and Hong Kong based propaganda group Human Rights in China (HRIC). VOA and RFA are financed by the USAGM/BBG. HRIC is financed by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, the Soros Open Society Institute and similar organizations.

As three of the four organizations listed as DIT customers are officially U.S. government financed one wonders who finances the fourth.

Ultrareach Internet Corp does not list any customers, executives or address. Bloomberg puts the company at an address in Cheyenne, WY which is of a small house used as a lawyer's office.

The USAGM/BBG Internet Freedom program had a 2018 budget of $13.8 million.

Through Falun Gong the U.S. government provides software and servers for circumventing China's Great Firewall. It is somewhat ironic that those services were used by the alleged Chinese government agents that Twitter and Facebook recently removed from their services:

In all, Twitter said that 936 accounts originating from within China have been suspended for a number of violations of the company’s “platform manipulation policies,” including spam, coordinated activity, fake accounts and ban evasion.
The social media activity of the suspended accounts, which posted in both English and Chinese, were part of efforts to undermine the “legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground”, the company said.

Twitter, Facebook and most other western social media platforms are blocked in mainland China. Most of the accounts identified by Twitter as “bad faith actors” circumvented the Great Firewall – as the country’s digital barrier is known – using virtual private networks (VPNs), though some were tracked to specific, unblocked IP addresses based in mainland China.

Twitter's expulsion run was, as usual, badly targeted:

The accounts taken down represented "the most active portions of this campaign”, the company said.
That was news to Luka Ivezic, a 24-year-old student at Kings College London, whose account - @TechPoliticist - had been suspended, and appeared on the list of those said to be run by, and out of, China.

Mr Ivezic, who was born in Croatia and says he has never been to China, recently completed his thesis. The subject? “Disinformation, and how artificial intelligence can empower the tools that China and Russia have to misinform us.”

An analysis of the total 200,000 accounts Twitter deleted points to mostly rented Russian language bot accounts which were used to agitate against Guo Wengui, a dissent Chinese tycoon who is seeking U.S. asylum. There is also an army of pro Guo Twitter bots who condemn China. That army was, of course, not suspended.

The Twitter accounts that tweeted against the Hong Kong riots were not sent by the Chinese government but Baidu forum users who flooded Twitter though the Falun Gong virtual private networks the U.S. finances to tweet in support of the Hong Kong police.

The U.S. government financing of those Falun Gong entities is not the only connection with that organization.

Shortly after Falun Gong came to the United States a U.S. government regime change organization set up a Friends of Falun Gong organization:

In the spring of 2000, a group of concerned American citizens wanted to take action to raise awareness about the terrible injustice facing Falun Gong practitioners in China.
Having the common desire to restore and protect the fundamental rights of Falun Gong practitioners, they turned for advice to a long-time champion of human rights issues, former U.S. Ambassador Mark Palmer, who has been following the plight of Falun Gong practitioners. At the time, Ambassador Palmer was the Vice-Chairman of the Board for Freedom House, and he still serves on that board. Among his many other achievements, Ambassador Palmer co-founded of the National Endowment for Democracy.

After months of hard work, in November 2000, with the help of Ambassador Palmer and others, Friends of Falun Gong USA was formally established.

The Falun Gong cult makes some significant money through its Shen Yun propaganda dance companies:

The dances continued, sleeves swirling, skirts rippling. A man came onstage to sing a song in Chinese, which was translated on the screen behind him. “We follow Dafa, the Great Way,” he began, singing about a Creator who saved mankind and made the world anew. “Atheism and evolution are deadly ideas. Modern trends destroy what makes us human,” he sang.
...
Shen yun, according to Shen Yun, means “the beauty of divine beings dancing.” (It can also be translated as “the rhythm of a divine spirit,” or, more simply, “God’s melody.”) The Shen Yun Performing Arts organization was founded in 2006, in New York’s Hudson Valley, and put on its first touring show in 2007. By 2009, there were three touring Shen Yun companies. Today, there are six companies, each consisting of forty or so dancers, all of them trained at the Fei Tian Academy, which is situated on a four-hundred-and-twenty-seven-acre campus established for Falun Dafa practitioners in upstate New York. The dancers are accompanied by an orchestra that incorporates Chinese instruments; each troupe includes about eighty people. In addition to the ninety-six American cities it is touring this year, Shen Yun will visit Vancouver, Berlin, Auckland, Taipei, Daegu, Aix-en-Provence, and dozens of other places.
Shen Yun is a nonprofit. In 2016, it reported more than seventy-five million dollars in assets and more than twenty-two million dollars in revenue.

It might well be that the money Falun Gong generates through such propaganda endeavors is channeled through its media empire into pro-Trump advertisement.

But the significant support U.S. government agencies give to Falun Gong, combined with the virulent anti-China policies of the Trump administration, lets one assume that there are also official dark money sources, think CIA, that support the Falun Gong's anti-China efforts.

Money is fungible. A U.S. government financed organization should not invest it in partisan U.S. politics. Some enterprising Democratic candidates could up their game by taking a deeper look into this issue.

Posted by b on August 21, 2019 at 18:13 UTC | Permalink

Comments

"The Democrats could up their game by taking a deeper look into this issue." you mean the CIA democrats like Mark Warner? the US has nothing to offer the world except war, which is why the people of the US must destroy this country. there is 1000% bipartisan agreement on the war drive against both china & russia. both parties spend their days yelling at each other about who is the most commie, like moscow mitch or comrade nancy, b/c they are unified in their war drive. as they are on anything else that matters. this country exists to wage war, as the platform for projection of power, against competitors. nothing else. the illusion that any of the operators w/in the system, any of them at all, are doing anything but crafting a persona in relation to power for self-aggrandizement, not challenging power in the slightest, is not helpful.

Posted by: jb | Aug 21 2019 18:32 utc | 1

b, what makes you think the Democrats are not in on the scam?

Also, just like the US funds NGOs in other countries, China too spends hugely and has bought many influential lobbyists and think-tanks as well as media personalities and politicians in the US. Not very different than Israel lobbyists through AIPAC and the massive Israel First big money. China influence operations in the US is likely significantly larger than US influence operations in China since China is a closed CCP controlled system.

Posted by: ab initio | Aug 21 2019 18:56 utc | 2

b wrote
"
The Democrats could up their game by taking a deeper look into this issue.
"
I agree with jb at comment #1

Yes there are "good" Democrats which are very much in the minority. The rest D/R are acolytes for the God of Mammon finance/war based social order of the West.

Yes, we are in a very strange WWIII with lots of spinning plates and propaganda action and shedding of blood mostly where the Western public does not "see" it

Posted by: psychohistorian | Aug 21 2019 18:57 utc | 3

I tried the Falun Gong exercises a few years ago. This whole sect really is disturbing because it involves about 2 hours of tai chi/qi gong type exercises every day. A lot of people report a vast improvement in their health because of these exercises, but any exercise you try that takes up two hours a day would do that, wouldn't it?

This appeals to people who have an obsessive/addictive personality to begin with. I lasted all of 2 days.

Also, the range of exercises is not particularly vast. For example, in a tai chi session, you might try various movements that involve various parts of the body. Not so with Falun Gong.

Posted by: Mischi | Aug 21 2019 19:13 utc | 4

excellent sleuthing b.... '''follow the money'''... if you can't see where they are getting their loot from - that is a bad sign in itself... as for the democrats - i agree with @ 2 ab initio... the whole usa establishment is in on the game... the game is eating itself though when it gets down to circling the money back into promo for one party - or a take down of one party.. that seems to be where the usa establishment is close to now...

Posted by: james | Aug 21 2019 19:54 utc | 5

Heh, I regularly get the Epoch times as bird cage liner, since it’s free. Glancing at the articles and editorials, it is indeed a deeply weird publication. By preference, I get the Chinese language version- the birds don’t mind and I get less of the crazy talk, since I can’t read Chinese- though some of the pictures are pretty funky in there own right. Not as fun as Chick tracts, but an interesting read, if crazy is your thing

Posted by: Stephen Johnson | Aug 21 2019 20:15 utc | 6

Thanks for the info on Shen Yun.
In the Bay Area, it seems there are at least 3 or 4 permanent Shen Yun advertising billboards at any given time. Just yesterday, I passed one advertising tickets for 2020!
The Epoch Times is also very widespread in distribution, although unclear on the actual readers. It seems that every 2nd SF Weekly box has an Epoch Times one next to it, although my personal experience is mostly downtown where the large Cantonese speaking population is.

Posted by: c1ue | Aug 21 2019 20:22 utc | 7

Aha, so that's what Shen Yun is!

Pardon a trivial observation, but during the past few years I've been puzzled by the occasional arrival of high-quality junk mail: glossy oversized postcards or brochures promoting the Shen Yun dance troupe performances.

I idly wondered who or what delivered my contact information to their mailing list, since dance troupes are not among my interests. Thanks for solving this minor head-scratcher!

Posted by: Ort | Aug 21 2019 20:22 utc | 8

Posted by: Mischi | Aug 21 2019 19:13 utc | 4

Not any exercise. Tai chi/Qi gong slows you down which is really good for your immune system, meditation is good too.

Chinese communists did a fusion between Western and traditional Chinese medicine, because they knew Chinese medicine worked to a certain degree, falun gong was part of that movement originally. They did not take the step to rationalism though and may have become too far spread with a single powerful head.
China does have a problem with answering people's immaterial needs I am told they are back to Confucius now which will be another fusion.
CIA does do religion, so Falun Gong ended up as a tool after they were persecuted in China, similar to Gülen, Tibetans, Chabad, Evangelicals and Mormons.

Posted by: somebody | Aug 21 2019 20:24 utc | 9

You missed a bit about "Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China"
Might be interesting to some of you.

Posted by: Stonewall | Aug 21 2019 20:30 utc | 10

Excellent work b! Funding what on the surface appears to be a propaganda op aimed at another nation becomes a form of campaign finance for a president's reelection campaign! I wonder how many such funds went to similar work on previous occasions?

It seems that at some point in time those within the Outlaw US Empire deemed it unimportant that other nations learn the funding for numerous NGOs seeking to subvert them are overtly financed by the USG and are thus not NGOs at all but CIA appendages; and that despite the overtness, the USG still claims those organizations to be legitimate NGOs.

I find it worthy in an ironic manner that the USA will soon be eclipsed by the nation it might have become had it not sought to be a global empire. In fact, it's the very product of those Open Door policy advocates that will soon become the bane of their descendants who opted for a financialized Free Lunch economy for themselves instead of a massively robust, resilient industrial/commercial economy for all Americans.

Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 21 2019 20:37 utc | 11

Falun Gong is kinda like Scientology crossed with Amway. Get rich quick while simultaneously healing your goiters. In its best days it was a terrible scam. Now it is just a blunt instrument that the US State Department uses to try and beat China with.

Posted by: William Gruff | Aug 21 2019 20:40 utc | 12

Stonewall @14,

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who opposes communism and supports empire is only fit to be parted out like any other broken machine.

Posted by: Jonathan | Aug 21 2019 20:50 utc | 13

The Epoch Times' Jeff Carlson has been in the thick of uncovering the broad Democratic Party coup (in league with transnational intelligence assets) against the Trump Presidency. Thus b's depiction here of the Dems potentially acting in the role of white knight subverts mountains of evidence. As for Falun Gong's potential affiliations with the CIA and NED that's another quite plausible storyline altogether.

Posted by: FSD | Aug 21 2019 21:01 utc | 14

Funny thing, after watching a Vesti News video on youtube I saw a video ad for the Epoch Times. It had a young white millennial saying a bunch of propaganda drivel about the evil communist Chinese with regards to the Hong Kong protests.

Money is flowing.

Posted by: DrivelP | Aug 21 2019 21:32 utc | 15

Perhaps experience affords one the possibility of rapidly discerning the underbelly of an organized grouping like Falun Gong. Early in its manifestations on streets in Europe it became as apparent as the nose on one's face that it was a well financed propaganda tool for the gullible and naive. In short, its a ridiculous novelty, a con job and a rip off for all who are taken in by such preposterous pretensions when its plainly so assuming in its virulent hatred. Anyone who protests their disturbing, illegal and unacceptable behavior best be prepared to be bitten.. Like various other cults they are not what they appear. Rather they are a mish-mash of absurd fantasies and hypnotic imaginations. Finally, such groups can seem innocent enough and yet become highly dangerous to others. But ask around and expect the response they are nice, gentle, kind and harmless or other such understanding expressions. Don't be taken in by the setup folks!

Posted by: Lbanu | Aug 21 2019 22:21 utc | 16

The unbearable lightness of irrelevant being....

No cult could disguise the galloping irrelevance and self-immersion in own´s hole...

Why the already irrelevant G7 Summit is making so much noise at citizenry level?
Because they know we have seen them naked, and are increasingly aware not only of their incapability to solve any problem affecting the citizenry, but also of their crazy way of conduting us towards the precipice...

We were commenting this morning that the G7 Summit´s leaders could well have fortified themselves in one of the "Relais & Châteaux" in Biarritz, may be that one presiding over the promontory, up the beach...with their security apparatus, in the style they do The Bildelbergers...But instead, they chose to make the citizenry well aware by making their lives, and proably the two last weeks of summer, miserable enough. To the slowing, car by car, police checkpoints starting in Hendaya ( at 32km from Biarrtiz, where the summit takes place...), you must add that the Topo ( like a Metro ) does not reach its final stop in Hendaya, and the way out of the highway in the same city is closed. To this add the nightmare of the Biarritz Airport closed, along with the beach, in full holidays season, and the city of Biarritz closed for any access if not to its own residents, who must hold and show obliged acreditation to access their homes and jobs....

The loses for the border residents, commerces, bars and restaurants in Irun and Hendaye are being quite huge in this end of summer season, in a region where the summer is quite short...

As a counter-summit, a campsite in Urrugne with due organized services, including medical services, security apparatus, along with roundtables, concerts and lectures to be held in fairground of Ficoba, all conveniently authorized. Although a delegation of the Yellow Vests is expected to come up, no disturbs are expected, as the event is called as peaceful meeting for alternative movements to capitalism.

Thus, why this high ratio noise? Why the helicopters do not stop the whole day flying and why Greta Thunberg says nothing about their carbon footprint?

This, for sure, have been organized to please that megalomaniac of The Donald, who, morevoer, aimed at first to stay in a US aircraft-carrier anchored in the Bay of Biscay!....Someone may have taken that nuts idea from his orange head, since, seeing the repercussion on land, that would had implied the cut off of all the fishing activity, one of the main way of life in the zone...The Basque fishermen, arrantzales, are very peaceful people.. but too much hardworking to allow any US Orange Agent coming here trying to touch them the balls...Curiously, or not so, Basque fishermen were travelling to Greenland an Newfoundland since.... ages...I fear Greenland people is of the same or similar paste....

Posted by: Sasha | Aug 21 2019 22:24 utc | 17

I didn't realize it was the same Epoch Times that did a good job covering Russia-Gate:

Spygate: The True Story of Collusion [Infographic]

Spygate: The Inside Story Behind the Alleged Plot to Take Down Trump

Posted by: Tobin Paz | Aug 21 2019 22:30 utc | 18

Thanks B for an excellent survey covering Falun Gong's business activities and cybersecurity connections with the US government and its agencies.

One surely wondered (until how) how Falun Gong can fund The Epoch Times using the same business model that Sheldon Adelson uses to fund a pro-Netanyahu newspaper "Israel Hayom" in Israel that Netanyahu himself endorses and which he or other people in the Israeli government might privilege with news of events that the rest of the Israeli news media has no access to. In this way "Israel Hayom", offered for free in Israel, poses a threat to other Israeli newspapers which have no rich patron to fund their activities and pay their staff but must rely on people buying their papers or regularly subscribing to them.

Also, when the sources of most news about prisoners having organs forcibly removed from them by the Chinese government go back to Falun Gong itself, one has to wonder about the veracity of such claims. If after 20, 30 years of such claims, there is still no independent verification of the claims of forced organ removals and transplants (and the British design firm Forensic Architecture hasn't yet been approached to create its 3D Bellingcrap-style visual recreations of the horrific surgery theatres in which the operations supposedly take place), then we must regard these claims with all the scepticism and scorn they may deserve.

Posted by: Jen | Aug 21 2019 23:28 utc | 19

Mischi @ 4:

The repetitive nature of the limited exercises (probably packaged so as to be doled out in minuscule quantities) and the astounding length of time you are to perform them would suggest they are deliberately designed to exhaust you physically and mentally so as to soften you up for the religious propaganda claptrap overload that comes later.

At that point you probably wouldn't be feeling too enthusiastic about arguing whether homosexual people or people of mixed-race ancestry are fully human or, as Falun Gong followers are taught to believe, sub-human.

I recall reading something ages ago about Krav Maga training sessions (Krav Maga is a style of martial arts training developed in Israel) in which trainees perform "warm-up" exercises for long periods of time until they are physically and mentally tuckered out. At that point when everyone is exhausted, the real Krav Maga training starts.

Posted by: Jen | Aug 21 2019 23:35 utc | 20

Thank goodness Karl Marx did all that work for us when he did! Free Lunch worshiping Neoliberals have absolutely nothing when it comes to doing actual work in the realm of political-economy and have had to rely on lies and force to enforce their "doctrines." When the economic demise of the USA's examined, the middle finger will be pointed at Neoliberals and all their free lunch allies as they endeavored to sink every boat but their own.

Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 22 2019 0:42 utc | 21

Not a big follower of ET or this religion. What I’m curious about is in between all the criticism of the papers politics no one has mentioned if their stories are accurate? I mean is it plausible that everything written about them is true but at the same time the articles are factual?

Posted by: Otto B | Aug 22 2019 0:59 utc | 22

Which came first, the chicken or the egg. The chinese crackdown on Falun Gong led to those in exile or underground to join forces with the US interests. It was not a US creation.

Every authoritarian regime hates religion that the state does not control. Falun Gong was beyond Chinas control and was a threat. Putin perceives evangelical christians a threat since its beyond the grasp of the orthodox church that is under defacto state control. The Anglo-US empire has suppressed Catholics by assassinating Popes and Presidents and hyping abuses of its priests that are no more prevalent than among other christian sects. The current Pope worked with the CIA in Argentina, and every Pope since the Smiling Popes death has been controlled.. China likewise controls the Catholic church in China as a condition for its existence

Its all about control. The US-China conflict is like fake Wrestling. Which one is the heel and which is the face is a matter of taste. Choosing one over the other is simply choosing a lesser evil, also a matter of taste. I”ll take the illusion of Democracy and Freedom over Chinas Totalitarian Social Credit scheme which harbors no illusions beyond “submit to the party's control or else”.

Posted by: Pft | Aug 22 2019 1:03 utc | 23

C I [email protected]
Shouldn't that be CIA,eh?
That's Jenny von Westphalen, incidentally. As to the money that Karl Marx brought to the marriage you must be joking. As to the balance of the farrago of nonsense you unloaded on the bar- there had to be a downside to the legalisation of weed.

Posted by: bevin | Aug 22 2019 1:18 utc | 24

A look inside by a former practitioner:

"That Falun Gong practitioners frequently die from treatable medical
conditions is one of Falun Gong’s dirtiest secrets. A lot of Falun Gong
practitioners have died this way. I heard about deaths often when I was
involved in the community, typically middle-aged or older practitioners
dying of cancers they didn’t treat. These cases would come up in group
“sharings”, where we would meet regularly and study scriptures
together then talk about them. And they would come up on the email
lists I was on. Usually it was a request for practitioners around the
world to “send righteous thoughts” to “eliminate evil interference” that
was causing this person to become ill. Word would quietly circulate
later that the person hadn’t made it.."

https://medium.com/@Ben_D_Hurley/-10677166298b

Posted by: daffyDuct | Aug 22 2019 1:28 utc | 25

Interview with Li Hongzhi, 1999

TIME: Are you a human being?
Li: You can think of me as a human being.

TIME: Are you from earth?
Li: I don't wish to talk about myself at a higher level. People wouldn't understand it.

TIME: What are the aliens after?
Li: The aliens use many methods to keep people from freeing themselves from manipulation. They make earthlings have wars and conflicts, and develop weapons using science, which makes mankind more dependent on advanced science and technology. In this way, the aliens will be able to introduce their stuff and
make the preparations for replacing human beings. The military industry leads other industries such as computers and electronics.

TIME: But what is the alien purpose?
Li: The human body is the most perfect in the universe. It is the most perfect form. The aliens want the human body.

TIME: What do aliens look like?
Li: Some look similar to human beings. U.S. technology has already detected some aliens. The difference between aliens can be quite enormous.

TIME: Can you describe it?
Li: You don't want to have that kind of thought in your mind.

TIME: Describe them anyway.
Li: One type looks like a human, but has a nose that is made of bone. Others look like ghosts. At first they thought that I was trying to help them. Now they now that I am sweeping them away.,

TIME: How do you see the future?
Li: Future human society is quite terrifying. If aliens are not to replace human beings, society will destroy itself on its own. Industry is creating invisible air pollution. The microparticles in the air harm human beings.
The abnormality in the climate today is caused by that [pollution], and it cannot be remedied by humans alone.
The drinking water is polluted. No matter how we try to purify it, it cannot return to its original purity. Modern
science cannot determine the extent of the damage. The food we eat is the product of fertilized soil. The meat
we eat is affected. I can foresee a future when human limbs become deformed, the body's joints won't move and internal organs will become dysfunctional. Modern science hasn't realized this yet.
At the beginning you asked why I did such things. I only tell practitioners, but not the public because they cannot comprehend it. I am trying to save those people who can return to a high level and to a high moral level. Modern science does not understand this, so governments can do nothing. The only person in the entire world who knows this is myself alone."

http://content.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2053761,00.html

Posted by: daffyDuct | Aug 22 2019 1:33 utc | 26

Falun Gong US compound’s neighbors fret over expansion plans

https://www.apnews.com/420a741ec19c4db3993d408747874b2d

Posted by: daffyDuct | Aug 22 2019 1:43 utc | 27

@Karlof

Marx provides a valuable analysis of how Capitalism works. No question.

It should surprise no one the essence of his ideas were adopted and used in the formation of a cult, inspiring reactions no different from how adherents of any religion react when their dogma and creation stories are challenged.

The essence of both Marxism and Neoliberalism is they are materialistic and anti spiritual to the core. The degradation of human emotional existense resulting from these belief systems has led us into a period of terrible nihilism and rapid social death - from the USA and Europe to post Soviet Russia and China alike, with a plethora of counter-cults created by the very same suspects to fill the void left by empty narrow mindedness and one-party thought.

Falun Gong is in many ways the inheritance of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. So too is the schadenfreude experienced by many of today's Marxists baying for the blood of American goys.

Posted by: C I eh? | Aug 22 2019 1:49 utc | 28

I don't have any good sources for how things really are in China. I believe the reports of organ transplant criminality in Israel but the reports about China - executing prisoners and taking their organs - certainly is possible but how does one know if it's true or just propaganda? Same with the treatment of the Uighurs - how bad is it? It is obvious that there is serious repression of dissent and tracking (like in the US) of peoples internet use but with the limiting of peoples activities via their social credit scores. Pepe Escobar has good reporting on the Belt Road initiative but is somewhat gungho China. Michael Pettis has good reporting on China's economy. What is hard is getting an idea of how dark or light China's government and social conditions are? I visited China in 2002 for a couple weeks to play music - I didn't notice overbearing security. The people seemed busy going about their day to day activities, I was advised not to look into Falun Gong.

Posted by: gepay | Aug 22 2019 1:57 utc | 29

Interesting interview with John Pilger.

“John Pilger- We Are in a WAR SITUATION with China!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OXTfShPMHg

Posted by: Stever | Aug 22 2019 2:07 utc | 30

@C I eh? #33
Sadly, your normally low information value posts have degenerated to complete farce at this point.
Marx was a philosopher. He never talked about how workers would overthrow Capital, he was purely interested in understand how the worker/capital economy worked and to extrapolate how the nascent Industrial Revolution would behave as time went on.
One of the greatest coups that American agitprop has ever pulled off is the highly selective outcropping of quotes from Marx's work.
For example, the infamous "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" was a throwaway line associated with the theoretical utopian end product of a non-Capitalist dominated economy.
It was not and is not a description of how an economy works at any time before that.
Furthermore, the nations that did go "Communist" did so in a manner that Marx never anticipated: they were largely peasant driven revolutions in non-industrialized nations, as opposed to oppressed industrial workers as Marx believed.
Equally, Marx didn't distinguish between sovereign and private capital - there was no such thing as private capital for national level policy in his era.
And of course, the "util". While an amazingly useful construct, the difficulty in detecting and defining the util has frustrated Marxists of every generation since the publication of Marx's seminal works.
Still, Marx was spot on in outlining many of the ways by which Capital - of whatever provenance - would try to screw over workers.

Posted by: c1ue | Aug 22 2019 2:35 utc | 31

@gepay #34
China does have amazing capabilities for online monitoring and censorship/information blocking or modification.
However, what people seem to forget is that China is 1.3 billion people - a large fraction of which are on the internet via phone or computer. I think it is over 800 million now. Even if every single person in the US was on the internet - which is close but not completely true - it would be less than half of what China deals with. And many of those 800 million users are basically the equivalent of 16 year olds with learner's permits.

Posted by: c1ue | Aug 22 2019 2:38 utc | 32

OT. . . but not really if we connect U.S. Empire’s geopolitical strategy in the Middle East to its “pivot to Asia,” which of course includes Hong Kong. And further, if we understand that U.S. Empire’s chief geopolitical objective is to economically strangle China and that major resistance actions, though largely still in the planning stage, are rapidly being developed.

This article outlines at least part of China’s (and other countries) resistance plan.

China’s Ultimate Play for Global Oil Market Control
https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/Middle-East/Chinas-Ultimate-Play-For-Global-Oil-Market-Control.html

A couple of notes: First, I cannot vouch for the article’s information or the author. Secondly, the title seems somewhat misleading. The article’s content could just as easily support a Chinese motive to resist Empire’s efforts to control global oil, rather than (as the title suggests) China’s hegemonic motive to control global oil.

Author info: Yossef Bodansky, the Director of Research at the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA) and Senior Editor of Defense & Foreign Affairs publications (including the Global Information System: GIS), was, for more than a decade, the Director of the US House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare

Posted by: FZ | Aug 22 2019 2:48 utc | 33

As some have pointed out above, don't forget that the Epoch Times has been one of America's most accurate newspapers on the subject of Russiagate/Spygate (the latter term is better, even though Trump uses it, because the real scandal lies with what the US and UK intel communities, not Russia, have done). Regarding Spygate, ET has been consistently more accurate than the propagandistic NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, or CNN. (ET must be doing something right, since Rachel Maddow made a long, screeching, misleading rant against them not long ago.) ET articles by Jeff Carlson are particularly well researched, but many of ET's other articles about Spygate and the current DOJ investigation tend do give fairly good documentation. Other conservative outlets that give helpful reporting and analysis about Spygate are Conservative Treehouse (articles by Sundance) and The Federalist (see Spygate Archives).

b, thank you for this excellent article. I must protest a little, however, about the photo you use, which to some may suggest a connection with fascism. In East Asia a left-facing swastika has absolutely nothing to do with Nazism. It is a traditional Buddhist symbol used at a large number of Buddhist temples even today. Falung Gong seems to be connected with fascistic and imperialist organizations in the US, but that has nothing whatever to do with this traditional Buddhist and Hindu image.

Posted by: Dao Gen | Aug 22 2019 3:13 utc | 34

I saw a book recently that changed my entire outlook on Marx. We think of him as a loonie now for a variety of reasons, but at the time, he was considered the greatest economist in the world. The book I saw was about the correspondence between Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx, and it makes sense that the American president should want to correspond with a world reknown economist.

Just throwing that out there to help you re-adjust your attitude on the subject of Marx.

Posted by: Mischi | Aug 22 2019 3:20 utc | 35

@34 gepay - "... good sources for how things really are in China"

1. Jeff J. Brown at his site ChinaRising or his many archives under "Beijing Dispatch" at the Greanville Post.
2. The archives of Godfree Roberts at the Unz Review.
3. Martin Jacques on YouTube.

All of this is quite easily discovered through Yandex or other search engine.

All three commentators have lived or do live in China and are westerners in origin. All three are very clear that absolutely every concept we in the west hold regarding China is one hundred percent wrong.

We in the west are at the terminating end of literally centuries of imperialist dogma, propaganda and racism regarding China. Therefore, the very study of the truth about China must involve an element of self-discovery as these old lies are found, dug out and liberated into the thin air from which they came.

If you want to know the truth about China, you can. It's not hidden, and it's not hard to find. But to some extent it is a task of diligence and study.

Good fortune to you.

Posted by: Grieved | Aug 22 2019 3:25 utc | 36

Calling someone an economist is not high praise ;)

Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Aug 22 2019 3:30 utc | 37

Jeff Brown has a recent article at the Saker on China, the last of a small series of three, in which he outlines how the "civilizational hierarchy" of China is the opposite of the west's individualistic hierarchy. No surprise to learn that in China, the most important thing is harmony, because one's duty, in a societal sense, is to everyone else, rather than to oneself:

Upside down or right side up? Comparing Chinese vs. Western civilizational hierarchies.

Brown has explained many times how the relationship between the Chinese people and their government is exactly the opposite of the western relationship. Without understanding this, one cannot make value judgments about any of the Chinese government's activities, for example with things like the social credit score.

Brown illustrates that the Chinese way for millennia has been to regard the government as not only part of the family but the elder head of the family, at that. In contrast to the west, the government holds a vastly more intimate position with the Chinese people. But the corresponding moral imperatives laid upon the government are also vastly greater.

And despite our western inheritance of a racist view of the Chinese as being docile and subservient, on the contrary they have a millennia-long history of uprising and rebellion. They will shout back at authority whenever they perceive injustice - as travelers to China will report, incredulously. Such behavior in the west would get you killed. In China, it indicates that something is wrong. To Beijing, it may even indicate that a course correction is called for.

Because Beijing may be the head of the family but it damn sure needs to act like one or it will get thrown out of the home.

Posted by: Grieved | Aug 22 2019 3:47 utc | 38

Anyone who is not up to speed with Marx's relation to bankers and industrialists should at least glancingly browse the following wikipedia page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Philips

Karlof1, bevin and others, you might learn something new.

Posted by: Lurk | Aug 22 2019 3:52 utc | 39

Sorry, messed up the link somehow, here is a working one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Philips

Posted by: Lurk | Aug 22 2019 4:06 utc | 40

Greived #43

I have to agree with you on one point. I visited China a few times and on one trip I came upon a traffic accident. No idea who was in the right or the wrong but what struck me was that one of the affected drivers was standing face to face with a traffic cop. And he was screaming at this cop not just face to face but nose to nose. My first reaction was that if that was happening in the US the cop would have been authorized to shoot that guy. I actually worried about that outcome. Then I noticed that the cop didn't have any kind of weapon. Not just that he shouted down his opponent. And that was that. It looked like no one was even cited.

Posted by: ToivoS | Aug 22 2019 4:16 utc | 41

@Grieved, sorry but that civilizational hierarchy is BS. I've met, befriended and worked with dozens of Chinese from PRC, HK, Taiwan, Singapore, and Vietnam. They are driven by materialism more than we are. I think it it comparable to the way my grandparents would have been after WW1 or WW2. They aren't at the stage where they can take material needs for granted the way we can in the West.

As for the rebellious nature - I think this is true. I have never had as much difficulty managing technical employees as I had with my Chinese colleagues. I was very surprised to see just how stubborn they could be. This was true of all, no matter their country of origin. Even Canadian Chinese.

Thirdly, what is also very surprising is the feeling of persecution that Chinese people feel towards the outside world. They honestly feel that they've been humiliated and invaded by all of their neighbours and the Western powers, and feel justified in defending themselves very aggressively. And many speak of the racism they feel that is directed towards them in other countries.

Posted by: Mischi | Aug 22 2019 4:23 utc | 42

I think this is a posting and thread about China

A Wednesday quote from Trump
"
While discussing his trade war with Beijing, the president insisted that someone had to do something about trade imbalances and then evoked explicitly religious imagery to back up his point.

“I am the chose one!” he said while looking upward toward the sky. “Somebody had to do it!”
"

Posted by: psychohistorian | Aug 22 2019 5:25 utc | 43

It's only appropriate that America is bankrolling and pimping yet another wacko religious group like Falun Gong--justified by the usual All-American lies about promoting (religious) freedom.

After all, this is the same America that:

-Funds, arms, and sponsors "moderate" jihadists and Islamicist head-choppers in Syria and Libya.

-Aids and abets medieval Saudi Wahhabi fundamentalists in the Middle East and beyond.

-Has been bosom allies with the Islamicist Kosovo Liberation Army in the former Yugoslavia, which has now been turned into an America-controlled haven for the human organ trade as well as narco and sex trafficking, after the US "humanitarian" war on Serbia.

-Embraces the Hindutva fascists of India and the current Indian ruler, Narendra "the Gujarat Genocider" Modi.

-Cultivated and groomed a delightful human being (and American terror asset) named Usama Bin Laden in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union.

-Oh yes, let us not forget America's BFF is the crazy Zionist state of Israel.

This is the true face of American values like (snicker) "Religion Freedom" in action.

But ultimately, America itself is a fundamentalist religion--an aggressive one that deceives the world that it is a Shining City on a Hill that was chosen by God to be a beacon of liberty for all humanity--whether humanity likes it or not.

Sadly, America forgets to mention that its divine City on a Hill is built on the blood of millions of people, whom the Land of the Free has murdered both within its borders and around the planet--from the Native Indians whose land America stole and currently occupies today to the Iraqis, Afghanis, Syrians, Vietnamese, Koreans, Serbians, Nicaraguans and other peoples that US has slaughtered in the name of democracy and freedom.

But America itself ain't a democracy. Never has been. Never will be.

America is a predatory religion--a fraudulent one that aggressively presents itself as a (false) idol to be worshiped by the world. Or else.

That is America in its essential national DNA.

Stripping Uncle Sam of His Protective Lies and Taboos
https://www.blackagendareport.com/stripping-uncle-sam-his-protective-lies-and-taboos

America Is a Religion - An Aggressive One
https://russia-insider.com/en/russia-insider-reduced-service-mode-until-early-september-summer-vacation/ri27506

Uncle Sam was Born Lethal
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/16/uncle-sam-was-born-lethal/

Posted by: AK74 | Aug 22 2019 5:39 utc | 44

Correct link for:

America Is a Religion - An Aggressive Onea
https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/how-its-exceptionalism-makes-america-dumb-and-aggressive/ri12257

Posted by: AK74 | Aug 22 2019 5:44 utc | 45

Lurk @ 44:

I did learn something new: Lion Philips was Karl Marx's uncle by marriage.

It would be very strange then if Lion Philips hadn't supported the penurious Karl Marx and his large family, in an age when it wasn't unusual for middle class business people - indeed, it was often expected of them - to use their wealth to support their poorer relatives and sometimes even to fund charities and other humanitarian causes.

The industrial part came much later when Lion Philips' grandsons founded the company that became Philips Electronics.

But I suspect you didn't expect MoA barflies to read the Wikipedia articles more carefully than you did.

Posted by: Jen | Aug 22 2019 6:29 utc | 46

Perhaps we should accept that Twitter etc. has its own agendas forming part of the Hegelian Dialectic being played against Americans and others. I connected the dots in many books, all suppressed, of course. From personal experience I will say this about China, they do everything right in Africa - they control 88% of the harbours, 94% of the internet (thus feeding the US & NATO mushrooms), and when they ask for assistance or advice they are very polite and they proudly implement whatever we teach them. That is totally not what the West is doing and it shows. In fact, the USA is being destroyed within, they can afford to do nothing and will still be winning, sigh, I warned before. GMJ

Posted by: GMJ | Aug 22 2019 6:29 utc | 47

@ 56 jen... thanks for the additional info - philips electronics and et..

in the slightly ot dept.. the usa state dept daily press briefing - which now happen maybe once every 2 or more weeks apart have come out today with a number of comments on all the issues that moa readers are typically interested in - syria, venezuala, china, iran and etc... essentially they put made in usa arsenic on all of it! said to say they are going for a meet tomorrow - or today in canada with the bozp couple - truedope and unfreeland to discuss venezuala... i can't wait for the oct. election to come in canada to get rid of these rejects...

https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-august-21-2019/

Posted by: james | Aug 22 2019 6:38 utc | 48

Falun Gong is a 100% CIA organisation, founded by the CIA exclusively for CIA objectives. Full stop. It serves no other purpose.

Posted by: BM | Aug 22 2019 6:40 utc | 49

Posted by: Jen | Aug 22 2019 6:29 utc | 56

"The industrial part came much later when Lion Philips' grandsons founded the company that became Philips Electronics.

But I suspect you didn't expect MoA barflies to read the Wikipedia articles more carefully than you did."

--You mean anachronistic argument is not allowed here???

(It is less clear whether his father or grandfather was the one who started in the tobacco business, and how far along--or industrialized--that was when Lion either entered the same or began his own tobacco "industry"...Let's call that a wash to your quote above...)

Posted by: Anacharsis | Aug 22 2019 6:44 utc | 50

@Lurk 44/45:

JWales' Wikideceivia as a reliable source on anything, particularly on fraught subjects like Marx and marxism? Are you joking?

Posted by: Rhisiart Gwilym | Aug 22 2019 6:57 utc | 51

Anacharsis @ 60:

Lion Philips died in 1866. How industrialised or mechanised was the tobacco industry then? Were people buying pre-rolled cigarettes in packages then or were most still smoking tobacco leaves in pipes?

The past really was a different world in many respects and people who seek to discredit Karl Marx by insinuating that he was financially dependent on a tobacco importer whose descendants founded a company that later still became a corporation will be found out sooner or later.

Posted by: Jen | Aug 22 2019 7:11 utc | 52

@c1ue

Marx was a philosopher. He never talked about how workers would overthrow Capital, he was purely interested in understand how the worker/capital economy worked and to extrapolate how the nascent Industrial Revolution would behave as time went on.

Show where in my post I said otherwise.

It is ok not to like what I said but don't so damn lazy.

Posted by: C I eh? | Aug 22 2019 7:46 utc | 53

Jen @ 57:

I don't think Karl Marx is discredited by any potential association to industrialism at all--he had to glean his observations from up-close familiarity for them to have legitimacy.

If I found anything to be discrediting of Marx at all, it's not his observations, but the fact that he was such a spoiled-ass myopic para-Hegelian.

Posted by: Anacharsis | Aug 22 2019 7:49 utc | 54

Ralph Peters, US Army Lt. Colonel (ret.), who has created the "New Near East Map", redrawing the area's borders (Armed Forces Journal, 2006) has this to say concerning China in his book "Never Quit the Fight" (Mechanicsburg, 2006, p. 65-66):

"A war with China would be a long war (even with resort to weapons of mass destruction), involving the sort of blockade that starved Germany in the First World War, combined with a strategic pummeling of China's vulnerable industrial base and its military ... a war with Beijing would be a destruction-from-a-distance war, waged in the hope that internal rivalries in China would lead to the profound sort of regime change we saw in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1917 ... Our grand strategy in such a conflict would be to turn the conflict inward, making it a Chinese versus Chinese struggle".

The relation to events in Hong Kong seem to be obvious.

Posted by: Thomas Bargatzky | Aug 22 2019 8:37 utc | 55

Posted by: Mischi | Aug 22 2019 3:20 utc | 35

I thought it was agreed that Marx was the prophet of globalization?

Marx worked as a journalist for the New York Tribune, so he was relevant to the discourse in the United States.
I doubt contemporaries considered him an "economist", he was very political in his lifetime.

But yes, Karl Marx was part of the global ruling class. Revolutions always start with the ruling class realizing that what they do is not sustainable.

Posted by: somebody | Aug 22 2019 9:37 utc | 56

I don't have any good sources for how things really are in China. I believe the reports of organ transplant criminality in Israel but the reports about China - executing prisoners and taking their organs - certainly is possible but how does one know if it's true or just propaganda? Same with the treatment of the Uighurs - how bad is it? It is obvious that there is serious repression of dissent and tracking (like in the US) of peoples internet use but with the limiting of peoples activities via their social credit scores. Pepe Escobar has good reporting on the Belt Road initiative but is somewhat gungho China. Michael Pettis has good reporting on China's economy. What is hard is getting an idea of how dark or light China's government and social conditions are? I visited China in 2002 for a couple weeks to play music - I didn't notice overbearing security. The people seemed busy going about their day to day activities, I was advised not to look into Falun Gong.

One thing to bear in mind about China is that unlike the USSR where it was very difficult to go abroad, last year about 150,000,000 Chinese went abroad on holiday. Almost all of them went home at the end of their holiday. Things cannot be that bad.
About Falun Gong, how can one trust anything that anyone allied to the CIA says? After all, Mike Pompeo, who was head of that gang, has told us that they have courses in "Lying, Cheating and Stealing" and he could have added assassinating.

e
Posted by: gepay | Aug 22 2019 1:57 utc | 29

Posted by: foolisholdman | Aug 22 2019 9:38 utc | 57

#57

Any "bad news" about China like alleged organ theft which are based on unverifiable hearsay sources and yet repeated ad nauseam by Western MSMs should be rightfully regarded as pure bunk unless proven otherwise.

Posted by: JW | Aug 22 2019 10:46 utc | 58

From Grieved @36: "We in the west are at the terminating end of literally centuries of imperialist dogma, propaganda and racism regarding China. Therefore, the very study of the truth about China must involve an element of self-discovery as these old lies are found, dug out and liberated into the thin air from which they came."

Everyone from the West should tattoo this to their forearm so that when they are typing away at the keyboard or holding their smartphone or tablet for the infinite scroll it stays in sight as a constant reminder. And the wise will understand that it is not just the truth about China that is buried in mountains of lies, but literally everything that has ever been perceived as a threat to capitalism/imperialism is likewise reflexively smeared and buried by the witting and unwitting agents of the ruling class.

Almost everything that most people in the West think they know about China is a lie. This sounds like a huge overstatement, what with all of the documentaries about China that people can watch and news articles they can read, but the framing of all of this media is deceptive. Sometimes the deception is crafted deliberately to please the documentarians' employers, but always it is because those producing the media are themselves operating from under the same mountain of lies as everyone else in the West, and they are not conscious of how that mountain of lies impacts their own perception. Michael Palin travel documentaries are cringeworthy examples of this, and they are among the better media that homebodies can learn about the world from.

Now as practice, review the tattoo on your forearm and also try to apply the principal to the discussion above about Marx.

Posted by: William Gruff | Aug 22 2019 11:25 utc | 59

"Media outlets falsely claimed the UN reported China is holding a million Uighurs in camps. The claim is based on unsourced allegations by an American commission member, US-funded outfits, and a shadowy government-funded opposition group."

https://thegrayzone.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-china-internment-camps-uighur-muslims/

Posted by: DaffyDuct | Aug 22 2019 11:26 utc | 60

"It might well be that the money Falun Gong generates through such propaganda endeavors is channeled through its media empire into pro-Trump advertisement...A U.S. government financed organization should not invest it in partisan U.S. politics. Some enterprising Democratic candidates could up their game by taking a deeper look into this issue."

In the larger context of pro-Trump alt-media venues being eviscerated by Twitter and Youtube and backwatered by Google, Falun Gong has to be de minimus in the scheme of things. As for 'government financed organizations' immersing themselves in partisan politics, let's get the CIA, DNI, DNC, FBI and State Department out of the foreign AND domestic coup business.

The Democratic candidates are allied with the Deep State as are the RINOs. Mindless caretaking, not deep looks, are the province of the American political class. No thinking -nor vigorous reformist energies- need apply.

Posted by: FSD | Aug 22 2019 11:33 utc | 61

Posted by: Mischi | Aug 21 2019 19:13 utc | 4

"CIA does do religion, so Falun Gong ended up as a tool after they were persecuted in China, similar to Gülen, Tibetans, Chabad, Evangelicals and Mormons."

Lol. Superficially, Falun Gong might be vaguely reminiscent of Chinese religious-nationalist movements like the Boxers, but it stops there, as no real Chinese traditionalist movement would ever work for or with a foreign power. They'd sooner drop dead.

Those Falun Gong sorts are your usual comprador bourgeois trash, with a thin veneer of tradition. And if they were persecuted in China, it was because of their links with the CIA.

Posted by: Corinne | Aug 22 2019 12:22 utc | 62

@ Posted by: somebody | Aug 22 2019 9:37 utc | 56

Marx never used the term "globalisation" (which is a late 20th Century term). He mentioned in Capital (book I) that capitalism's inner logic tends to the direction of forming (determination) a "world market" (the term he uses).

Marx was born from an upper-middle class family. His father was a prosperous lawyer and, at the apex of his family fortunes (when he was a child), was able to buy a small vineyard near Trier (the city he was born and lived). Marx had a very comfortable life until he got his Ph.D. You can say he was born rich, but his family definitely wasn't ruling class -- they were a prosperous liberal, "upper-middle class".

However, Marx's status as a rich person was quickly removed: for his ideas and writings, he was stripped from his Prussian citizenship and became a nationless person -- a status he would have for the rest of his life. He lived his entire adulthood and old age in poverty, and was only able to continue his investigations because Engels (who was a son of a German industrialist who had factories in England) literally paid for his living expenses. At the very end of his life, he was able to live in relative comfort again because his uncle died and the German government finally conceded the inheritance to him.

Marx died in London and was buried as an indigent at the Highgate cemetery in a collective tomb (they refused to give him an individual tomb because they thought he was a Jew). The monument we see nowadays with his bust doesn't mark his grave (there's no body below it, it's merely comemorative) and was a much later construction.

Posted by: vk | Aug 22 2019 12:45 utc | 63

Excellent article.
Thank You.

Posted by: Josh | Aug 22 2019 12:49 utc | 64

As a ballet devotee, I've had the opportunity to attend the Shen Yun performances, twice as a matter of fact. The dancing is exquisite (very precise, very acrobatic). The costumes alone are a sight to behold. The orchestra is first rate.

But then they go and spoil it all with a dance in each half of the show that is so embarrassingly propagandistic, I have to wince every time I think about it. It's usually something along the lines of a sweet girl and her elderly father, devoted followers of Falun Gong in China, just minding their own business, practicing their religious beliefs. Suddenly, a band of thugs dressed in military uniforms descend on the pair, beat them, separate them forcibly, and drag the poor old man off to prison, leaving the sweet daughter sobbing on the floor. Like I said ... maudlin and pretty pathetic. Totally out of sync with the rest of the performance. Sitting through that twice was enough for me. Have never been back.

Posted by: Pat K California | Aug 22 2019 13:00 utc | 65

To avoid confusion and leaving oneself open to attack when discussing Falun Gong with others who may be enamored with it, we should recognize that the organization we see today is very different from its origins as a simple scam to bamboozle unsophisticated rural folks, rob them of anything of value and turn them into a zombie army for the conman at the top of the scam. L. Ron Hubbard would be proud of Li Hongzhi, the swindler at the pinnacle of the Falun Gong pyramid marketing scheme.

In the West, with our caveat emptor attitude towards scammers, what Li was doing seems perfectly acceptable, and we would feel that the suckers caught up in his scam have nobody to blame but themselves. The Chinese see things a little differently, though, and the government sees it as their responsibility to protect the weak, mentally infirm, and the desperate from being taken advantage of by hucksters, particularly when the scam grows beyond the simple shell game on the street corner. From the western perspective we would wonder "Isn't it Li's right to profit off the gullibility of others? So what if he strips the life savings from desperate cancer victims with promises of a cure that will never happen? It's the mark's fault for falling for it! It isn't as if Li is making them drink bleach or anything! He's just telling them to do some exercise and sell some DVDs! What's wrong with that?"

Since the US State Department took Falun Gong under their wing the organization has diversified and no longer relies upon using a captive flock to sell crap. This does represent a significant change in how Falun Gong works, and people should keep this change in mind when trying to critically discuss the organization with others who may only know the Hollywood history that is currently associated with it.

Posted by: William Gruff | Aug 22 2019 14:14 utc | 66

Interesting article,which informs me on the subject of Falun Gong that I was completely ignorant of.One can see a parallel with Mujahedin-e-Khalq in relation to american politics in Iran.How about Baha'i religion?Is that also an Outlaw Imperial Tool,or rather used as such,or do they not follow any political agenda?

Posted by: willie | Aug 22 2019 14:48 utc | 67

AlainJ @68

It is too bad that the evil empire's "regime change" operations trump identity politics in severity, but those are the breaks. Maybe you would prefer to see China in Yugoslavia's condition, but the preferences of the Chinese people are for something a little different. Fortunately for the Chinese, you're not getting your wishes in the matter.

Posted by: William Gruff | Aug 22 2019 14:48 utc | 68

@FZ #33
The article focuses on personalities and short term tactics. Whether true or not, unclear how much this matters vs. the bigger picture.
The US dominates the oil market for several reasons - some of which are historical and some of which are structural.
Historically, the US was the largest importer of oil since at least the 1970s, but this is no longer true. Between China's growing consumption of oil and the US' internal production of oil increasing due to shale, China is now importing 50% more oil than the US.
The largest consumer of a traded commodity is going to have a huge leg up in anything involving exchanges or other market associated mechanisms involving that commodity. Historically, the US as the largest importer led to New York and Texas dominance of world oil export markets. With the change, Shanghai is going to matter more over time. So the trading structure today is still historically US, but is shifting.
A second, much stronger structural issue, is the petrodollar. Again, historically the US being the largest importer was a powerful impetus to use USD as the standard unit in oil trades - for that matter, in world trade in general.
The agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia and the UAE reinforced this: that the US wouldn't try to control the price of oil sold by these nations so long as proceeds were reinvested into dollars.
The world trade in dollars part - the US is no longer the largest volume of world trade by a single political unit. For that matter, Saudi and UAE oil flow to China more than the US as well. However, structurally the RMB just isn't ready to replace the US dollar - regardless of other issues.
China is trying hard to fix that - the Iran and Russia sanctions have helped a lot since it has given a significant number of nations, incentives to work with Chinese and Russian interbank money transfer systems vs. SWIFT. SWIFT, while a European institution which handles multiple currencies, still relies to a huge degree on American companies and government institutions i.e. New York.

Posted by: c1ue | Aug 22 2019 14:53 utc | 69

@Lurk #40
As karlof1 and others have noted - there is a big difference between having a bankster relative be a sponsor as opposed to a Koch-style sponsorship.
Karl Marx definitely didn't get much out of his sponsorship than food, and his work equally wasn't supportive of Capital practices except in the negative i.e. Marx identified ways by which Capital could be abusive which could easily be used to develop new abuses much as Dr. Michael Hudson has become de rigueur reading for wannabe imperialists.

Posted by: c1ue | Aug 22 2019 15:00 utc | 70

@ Posted by: AlainJ | Aug 22 2019 14:22 utc | 68

Glad to clarify your doubts:

1) Tibet was conquered by China. Put any moral patina you want over it, but that's the fact. No, China won't "return" Tibet.

2) There's absolute no evidence this Falun Gong was "destroyed" by the CCP, or that its members were kidnapped, tortured and their organs harvested. All we have are allegations (without any evidence) by Falun Gong's own members.

3) There's a lot of evidence those protests in HK are fruit of a color revolution (I and others here have already listed them in many occasions, so you'l have to look it up), backed up by the USA. The charm of the color revolution tactic is that its spark is an already existing contradiction in the "target government" (TG -- yes, that's an official nomenclature the Americans use in the manual of unconventional warfare). Igniting color revolutions is of low risk and low cost for the Americans precisely because they'll always get plausible deniability from the start.

--//--

So, about that employee of the British consulate in HK.

The Western MSM was quickly to jump to "conspiracy theories" and call it a bizarre abduction by Beijing in order to thwart the protests in HK. They immeadiately stated he was "missing".

Turns out he was officially detained (so he wasn't missing, the MSM just forgot to ask Beijing for the official version), because he was into prostitutes:

The Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed Wednesday that Cheng was under administrative detention in Shenzhen. On Thursday, police in Shenzhen's Luohu district told Global Times that he was detained for violating article 66 of the Law of the People's Republic of China on Penalties for Administration of Public Security. The article includes solicitation of prostitutes.

It is disgraceful to be caught for soliciting prostitutes. Those who are arrested usually wish to hide the truth. Shenzhen police also told Global Times that it was at the request of Cheng that they did not inform his family. In other words, if the British foreign ministry and Western media did not hype it, Cheng could have quietly returned to Hong Kong after being detained for 15 days.

The NYT and WaPo went mute about it after it was found out this employee was doing prostitutes. The Guardian, however, is doubing down:

China's state media accuses worker at UK consulate 'of visiting prostitutes'

Chinese state media has accused a worker at the British consulate in Hong Kong detained in mainland China of visiting prostitutes – an accusation often used by the authorities to smear the reputation of government critics.

So, it is only China who uses unholy relations with females to destroy men's careers? Never knew Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Kevin Spacey et al were Chinese!

From the same article, it continues:

The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid owned by the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, quoted Shenzhen police on Thursday as saying that Cheng was detained “for involvement in prostitution”. It added that the law stipulated that people “who engage in prostitution or visiting prostitutes” should be detained for up to 15 days.

First of all, this article proves the headline is false: it wasn't the "Chinese state media" who "accused" the employee: it was the Shenzhen police.

Second: the Global Times, regardless of its filiation, followed the basic principles of journalism and quoted the source. It's up to the Guardian to contact the Shenzhen police in order to confirm or disprove the Global Times' version of the story. If they have sources in HK, then they surely have someone who speaks Mandarin to contact with the Shenzhen police.

But they didn't do that -- and won't do that. Instead, they'll rely on its readership's parochial view of China in order to make the automatic connection State-media-police as an "autocratic" unity makes their version to appear to be true.

Meanwhile, people who doubt Epstein didn't commit suicide are called left and right "conspiracy theorists" by this Western MSM -- the same MSM who parroted the official version of the USG as it was an unquestionable truth.

Posted by: vk | Aug 22 2019 15:37 utc | 71

"Epoch Times", eh?

Well, it worked pretty well for Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Moonies started the Washington Times and sucked up to the Reagan Right, as an alternative to the "lefty" Wash Post. Moon poured $M's into it, but it paid off in political favor & influence. It still exists - my (rich GOP) cousin in DC is an actual subscriber.

Posted by: elkern | Aug 22 2019 15:50 utc | 72

@ Posted by: Lurk | Aug 22 2019 4:06 utc | 40

All the references to the wikipedia article you posted here are marked with "citation needed". The only concrete source there is one letter Marx wrote to Phillips, where he only talks about the geopolitics of the time.

Marx was Phillips' nephew (we can infer that by the sign of the letter). That Marx's family was prosperous (but not ruling class), we already knew. He can't control with whom his aunt will marry (here in Brazil, we have a saying: "we can't choose family").

Besides, as the content of the letter well states, it doesn't matter how prosperous and well-connected his family was: he was stripped of his citizen rights by the Prussian government and thus didn't have any rights under law.

Posted by: vk | Aug 22 2019 15:52 utc | 73

turns out the "organ harvesting" claims were given attention from the same folks who thought kidnapping a huawei executive was a great idea; hooray for canadia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong_and_live_organ_harvesting

having lived near the rather large chinatown of a major canuck city i can say the gong members are quite visible despite what are probably small numbers. epoch times issues have their own newspaper boxes on numerous corners and there are frequent "protests" (usually consisting of 20-30ish people at most) where they hold up large banners with slogans about evil china and stolen kidneys and such.

i recall when the "bodies" exhibit came to the states rumors were flying that the skinless cadavers used were the unwilling corpses of chinese dissidents. all these odd "blood libels" probably come from the same place but who knows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodies:_The_Exhibition#Ethical_concerns

maybe the gongs can start an exchange program with the mek or isis. it's always good to rotate your cults before they get stale.

Posted by: the pair | Aug 22 2019 15:54 utc | 74

Congratulations to Lurk @39 for urging us all to look up Marx on Wikipedia. That is Deadpan humour.
Anyone who was unaware of Marx's relationship with the Philips family of Eindhoven fame really ought not to be posting opinions about Marx. They ought to be reading books.
It is one of the great facts of internet life that an opinionated fool is a fool exposed.
This forum would be a much improved place if people only shared what they know or sincerely believe with each other. And people who know nothing about Marx-or for that matter Hegel- do not automatically become knowledgeable by posting half baked assertions and bad guesses here or anywhere else.

Posted by: bevin | Aug 22 2019 17:12 utc | 75

Karl Marx, Prussian government agent

https://postflaviana.org/wolfgang-waldner-marx/

Posted by: SwissArmyMan | Aug 22 2019 17:31 utc | 76

A real gift to the democrats ? Will they take it ? Difficult to attack Trump on foreign's interference now... Another special counsel ? I think it will a piece of cake to make it another nothingburger. Arrest a leader, exfiltrate him in Japan, and assure you'll take a deep look into the matter. End of story. Of course if one democrat dares to bring it up. We'll see... But thank you b. for giving us so valuable information, and for the work behind it.

Posted by: alain | Aug 22 2019 17:42 utc | 77