WASHINGTON: The head of the powerful US House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee on Friday (Dec 11) slammed what he called President Donald Trump's "unsophisticated response" to China's ambitions and called for a major recalibration of US policies.
Chairman Richard Neal, a Democrat, urged the future administration of fellow-Democrat Joe Biden to formulate a package of programs and investment to counterbalance China, including through re-energized cooperation with European allies.
Instead of pausing trade talks to focus first on domestic issues, as Biden has said he plans to do, Neal urged the new administration to embrace European overtures to hammer out a new broad trade deal with Europe....
"A new US-European trade arrangement will only enhance our ability to moderate China’s intensifying pursuit of growth and prosperity, which threatens to subject the rest of the world to its economic and political dominance," he said. Reuters
For more than 500 years since the day the Europeans invaded and raided the rest of the world, colonised and turned countries and people into the slaves, which they called in kinder term, subjects of their empires, that was the world order. A white men's world order, a balance of power in favour of the white men at the expense of the coloured people of the world.
In the last 100 years, this role was continued by the Americans as the dominant and preeminent number one Empire of the day. What it means is that they are the rich and powerful, they controlled everything in the world, who can be rich and who cannot be rich, who can be part of their world system, who cannot. They decide the fate of every country and its people. Victims of the Americans would be ostracised and isolated from their world system and remained poor, and looked incompetent and unable to manage their countries, their economies and their well being, when the cause is actually the American Empire. Cuba, North Korea, Myanmar and many Latin American and African countries fall into this category.
The Americans could do anything they want, above the law, respecting the law or disregarding the law. The Americans are above the law, lawless, they are not bound by any international law. Any law that is against the evil ways of the Americans would be ignored or torn apart, disrespected and disregarded. They attacked countries at will, invaded countries, conducted regime change, wars, sanctions and bully and oppressed any country they so desired, in the name of the American Empire, in the name of American Exceptionalism, ie above the law and fake democratic values and fake human rights.
Today, China has risen and wanted to grow and prosper and allow its people to live better. This is not acceptable to the Americans. This is called ambitious and a threat to the American way of life and the American Empire and dominance. China is not conducting a war of invasion against the Americans, but wanted its people to live well, to live with respect and dignity. This cannot be allowed. This is aggression, ambitious and must be put down, even by wars if threats and containment do not work.
China's rise and the prosperity of the Chinese people is called a threat to the American way of life and their security, without having to go to war with the Americans. China and its people, must be like the rest of the world, be poorer than the Americans and controlled and dictated and bullied by the Americans as the general order of things. Only the Americans can call the shot, be the top dog of the world. No one else can. Not even the Europeans. This is the American world order and cannot be challenged or changed.
The Biden Administration would be worse than the mad Trump Administration. They want the Europeans to gang up with them to control and cripple China and to rule the world again. China would have to face a bigger threat. China's only hope is for the support of the rest of the world, to help the rest of the world to rise and prosper quickly, to be free from the control and clutches of the Americans and the Europeans, by providing cheaper services and goods to the rest of the world. The world could and would be divided by the Americans and the Europeans on one side against the rest of the world on the other side. When this takes place, they can trade among themselves as the rest of the world would not be able to pay for their goods and services. And China would provide the alternative, the other options of equally good and affordable goods and services.
This would be the next contest for influence and control for the rest of the world and a new world order. With China's rise, the rest of the world can also rise without being labelled as a threat or enemy of the West and the American Empire, to be isolated, attacked and oppressed, and sanctioned into isolation and poverty, a world order of white men supremacy. There will be a new world order where every country is free to find its own path to growth and prosperity without being attacked and contained by the evil American Empire.
The biggest economy will be China. The biggest consumer market will be in China. The biggest consumers will be the Chinese middle class. China will be the base for future new technologies. Go figure who will win this contest. And the new rich will be from Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Will there still be a place for the rogue and gangster behaviour of the West and America? With the developments in Ukraine, with the Americans wanted to do the Europeans in, dumped them and buried, the Europeans have been woken by a rude shock. It is all about American first, American prosperity, the Europeans can be sacrificed as gun fodder, to fight the Russians and die for the prosperity and dominance of the American Empire. What are the Europeans thinking, what are they going to do, to be free countries, not colonies of the American Empire, to be kicked around. When would Nord Stream 2 be scuttled by the Americans?
And Trump is coming back if senile Biden could not finish the job.
21 comments:
A combined China and Russia sincere in maintaining a peaceful World shall benefit all humanity.
The Evil shall be defeated soon.
Cheers
HO Ching
Halls 7&8 which had been designed for Connect@Changi for business travellers had been repurposed for covid treatment.
These have individual rooms.
Hall 10 was also added to cater for the elderly in an open ward kind of design for nursing staff to access patients easily and quickly.
The Expo team has been working hard to get Hall 9 ready, with lessons from both the Halls 7&8 as well as Hall 10.
Halls 7&8 have run out of rooms with adjoining doors to take in kids with their caregivers. Parents have had to run out of their rooms to get to the next room where their kids are.
So for Hall 9, there are bigger and more adjoining rooms to cater for kids with their parents or other caregivers. This is to allow up to a family of 5 to be together.
Lolz! They had provided the dinosaur colouring rolls of paper from IKEA, which has now run out of stock - all taken by the Expo CTF for kids to enjoy colouring, or watch cartoon and children’s channels on TV.
The other half of hall 9 is designed as an open ward for the elderly - hospital type beds from MOH, toilets which can handle trolley baths for those too frail to go in wheelchairs for their baths, and so they go for their baths in trolley beds.
This section is interspersed with nursing stations with clear line of sight to 8 beds each direction, with all the other supporting facilities to handle other health emergencies - crash carts, etc.
Kudos to everyone who worked hard, worked smart, worked fast to get this up in time before chap Goh meh night, to be ready in case of an Omicron surge post CNY.
Kudos to MOH, Raffles Medical Group, the Expo team, the Surbana Jurong team, the security and managing agent teams, all the contractors, as well as others providing or piloting teleconsultation, televisits and other non contact solutions.
Well done!
This is one way to get ahead of the Omicron wave, and the inevitable initial panic as numbers go up.
And then they hear stories of friends, families or colleagues who have been covided and recovered. And so the fear will go down gradually.
And those who have been covided are now advising their friends and contacts, sharing their experiences.
Instead of 20 times more dangerous than the seasonal flu, the covid is now about twice as dangerous as flu for the vaccinated.
Low risk doesn’t mean zero risk, even as we hear of deaths of kids in cities with high standards of medical care like Hong Kong.
So let’s be measured.
Keep your oximeters with you to check for silent pneumonia, and get lozenges and other favourites to sooth sore throats and make symptoms more bearable.
Most of all, get vaccinated or boosted, if you have not already done so.
It helps greatly reduce the risk of severe illness or deaths.
ASEAN had better wake up fast as the 'White Curse' is creating trouble in Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia, providing financial and subterfuge support for opposition parties and NGOs against the Government. When the Ukraine story ends, this is the region they will concentrate on to destablise.
Regime changes is the agenda, but look at what regime changes have brought to Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria among others. These countries, ie the people themselves yearned for democratic rule, but what they have not bargained for is luring the devil into the house to create disasters, littered with unending conflicts.
The USA wants to do big trade with Europe. The USA tried and failed to barge in to sell expensive gas to Europe, to compete with Russia. They failed and is now hitting below the belt, as they always do, by putting pressure on Germany to stop NORD Stream 2 from starting.
What trade with EU are they thinking of to compete with China and others? The USA would have to go back to basics to restart their manufacturing base to compete once again with not just China alone, but South Asian Countries and the expected rise of India. At the level of cost alone, it would be a hurdle for USA made goods to compete on price alone against the Asian countries.
The so called new strategy calls for USA to recalibrate it's priority, which is ignoring the problems at home to concentrate on countering China and creating trouble all over the world. The problems in the USA, eg homelessness, drug addiction, falling infrastructures and racial issues calls for immediate attention, which at this point is almost beyond tipping point, like the debt issue. Their exceptionalism is not going to put right these issues by just ignoring them.
The people behind the new strategy obviously cares little about USA citizens, calling on Biden to change his direction on home issues, like infrastructure renewal, and also blaming Trump for his 'unsophisticated response' to China. All they want to do is counter countries that are seen to be doing better and overtaking them. You could see that the whole administration is rife with confrontational and desperate mad people. Therefore, it cannot be denied that whether it is Republicans or Democrat, it is those same people behind the scene that are setting the agenda.
The USA is not unlike a one party ruling behind the curtain moving the puppets, but in the eyes of it's voters and the world it is a beacon of a democracy. Ignorance is indeed bliss!
@Virgo,
If S'pore adopt China method, you die liao.
Entire 5.7M people locked down. No MRTs moving, no cars or buses or lorries on roads, no shops or office open, no bicycles, no scooters, no pedestrians, nobody can leave their house.
Nobody can leave home except for appointed skeleton staff to man specified essential service like hospital, police, ambulance, fire station.
Need to work for money??? Fuck you!!!
Need to get food?!?!?
You wait for army 3-tonners with people in hazmat spacesuits to throw you some tin food 1-a-week.
After 3 weeks of 24/7 quarantine, then each household will be allowed to send 1 person outside for 1-hour each week to buy food.
After another 3 weeks, then slowly re-open.
@All,
This Friday afternoon, it will be announced the following:
1. GST TO BE 8% FROM 1ST JULY 2022, AND 9% FROM 1ST JULY 2023.
2. FOREIGNER FLOODGATES TO BE OPENED UP MORE.
3. CHICKEN WINGS FOR THE DUMBOS.
Remember, you heard it here first.
War in Europe is supposed to start on 16th February according to someone in the USA. The USA is in control of the war, when it is going to start, how it is going to start, everything.
Hope it is not a nuclear war. Oh yes they promised not to start a nuclear war, but who trust the USA? Like trusting a snake not to bite you.
Rich USA Robs Poor Afghanistan
After U.S. President Joe Biden's decision last Friday to carve out half the assets of Afghanistan's central bank for U.S. victims of terrorism, including the 9/11 attacks, criticism is mounting of the unusual move, made through an executive order. Many experts say it will act as a final death blow to the country's economy.
"The richest country in the world has decided to rob the poorest country in the world in the name of justice for a crime in which no Afghans participated," said Barnett Rubin, a former advisor to the U.S. and Afghan governments.
"There is something wrong with a financial system where one state can unilaterally block the national assets of another to pay off questionable claims by its own citizens," said Munir Akram, Pakistan's ambassador to the U.N., in a statement on Friday.
The U.S. has held approximately $7 billion of frozen assets of Da Afghanistan Bank, or DAB, since the Taliban takeover in August. In an executive order on Friday -- his first related to Afghanistan -- Biden moved to consolidate all the Afghan assets within the U.S. into the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and issued a recommendation that half, or $3.5 billion, be set aside as damages to be paid to victims of terrorism. However, that second half is also potentially subject to litigation, pending at least one court order.
Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesperson, said that DAB deserves to be entrusted with the assets because it is an independent entity. "It doesn't belong to any faction or government," he said. "So, this step taken by President Biden, in our view, is against the law and international practices."
The administration has faced a wave of criticism since the announcement on Friday. Hamid Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan, called on Biden to reconsider the order, saying it was an "atrocity against Afghan people." Hundreds of civilians holding banners protested in Kabul on Saturday for the release of all assets. DAB protested the executive order as an "injustice," declaring that it would "never accept" any use of the assets other than their full return to Afghanistan.
Many regional experts are expressing disappointment with the decision.
The USA is a country corrupt to the core. The two parties create and fabricate all kinds of fake conspiracy theories, even against each other. In a country where lies and fabrication is fair game and the norm, no one fears the consequences and they can get away with murder. They basically lie to each other, to their own people the same way they lied to the rest of the world.
The USA lied about Iraq and WMD. They lied about Vietnam. They lied about Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and is lying about Russia's intended invasion of Ukraine. How in the world can allies and doggies still choose to believe in them is unbelievable. They even worship the White God that brings disaster upon them knowingly.
Simple. They just disconnect the link to the thinking process in the brains of the bananas.
And the bananas did not know there was this thinking process any more and just parrot whatever the white men planted in their disconnected brain without having to think it through and feeling very good about it.
The US is evil to the core. Inciting and provoking wars everywhere, Ukraine, South China Sea, against Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, Iraq, Myanmar and several African and Middle eastern countries etc etc. Meddling with every country's internal affair to create instability and to conduct regime change.
The dominance of the US is based on the weakness and instability of other countries.
UKRAINE PRESIDENT GOING TO GET BILLIONS OF EUROS FROM WESTERN EUROPE. NO NEW INVASION OF UKRAINE BY RUSSIA.
Remember, you read this here first!!!
'We lie, we cheat and we steal' Pompeo was not lying for once.
MdM
Some quick updates from USA re covid
First, the good news.
New daily case numbers are falling in all parts of USA, except for one red spot in Alaska, 2 dark pink spots in Kentucky and Mississippi, and a handful of pink to faint pink states. All others are green.
Overall, case numbers are down to just over 200k a day, down from Omicron peaks of over 800k a day in January.
Second, the mixed news.
Hospitalisation has fallen, but is still at a high of over 120k in hospitals.
In terms of age group distribution, we could see that the absolute numbers and the relative proportion of kids, 0-4 and 5-17, have risen.
Hospitals in the less vaccinated parts of USA remains under tremendous pressure.
Third, the sad news.
The numbers of deaths from the Omicron is still sizeable at a few thousands a day, even when the case fatality rate has fallen.
This is bcos of the huge numbers of Omicron, and the relatively high proportion of unvaxxed in several of the USA states and regions.
Cumulatively, the USA has seen over half a million reported Covid deaths over the past 2 years.
Fourth, the slightly troubling news that we need to track.
The even more infectious Ba.2 subvariant of the Omicron has already been making inroads against the Ba.1 near absolute dominance in the USA.
It took the Ba.1 original Omicron about 4 weeks to go from less than 10% of USA cases, to dominate at over 90%. It was than 2 months between early December last year till middle January this year, for the Ba.1 to go from near zero to over 99% of the covid cases.
Over the last 2 weeks, the new more infectious Ba.2 Omicron has already established itself at a clear 5% of the USA covid cases.
We expect the Ba2 to easily become a 90% or higher dominance in the USA in a matter of the weeks ahead.
This would be an echo of what has happened in Denmark, South Africa, India and elsewhere that have tracked and reported the Ba.2 arrival earlier.
So we should expect that the Ba.2 will similarly start their march to dominance in Sg, with an even higher chance of getting infect d within the next few months, probably in the next few weeks.
Back to Sg and kids:
We still have parents who worry about the unknown long term effects of vaccination for their kids, even when they were themselves among the first to be vaccinated last year.
This can put their kids at unnecessary risk.
Why?
With Omicron, including the emerging Ba.2 subvariant, we should expect to meet the virus sooner than later.
With Omicron (or any other covid virus variant), we have known risk of death, even for kids without any known medical conditions.
With Omicron or any other variants, we also know about the risks of long covid.
Continued...
Long covid has led to serious weakness on many fronts in previously healthy people: heart, kidney, diabetes, hypertension, as well as the invisible neurological conditions like depression, foggy brain, and the highly debilitating conditions like extreme fatigue or exercise induced extreme fatigue.
This long covid can happen to mild covid cases, as well as to the moderate and severe cases.
So on balance, we are better off vaccinating our kids earlier than later.
Already the Ba.2 is starting to squeeze their way into the case numbers.
Ba.2 is known to be even more infectious than the already highly infectious Ba.1 original Omicron variant.
We don’t yet know if the Ba.2 is more or less dangerous than the Ba.1 subvariant of the Omicron.
But with its higher infectivity, we are all even more likely to be infected within the next few months.
So it is better to play safe and get our kids vaccinated sooner than later.
Over at the USA, the FDA has postponed a review session scheduled for the 15 of February for the vaccines for the youngest 6 months to 4 years old.
Some reports suggested that the data for 6-24 months showed good response after 2 dose, but not for the 2-4 year olds. This was why Pfizer expanded the trial to cover a 3rd shot for the 3 microgram infant/toddler paediatric doses.
The data for the 3rd shot could be ready in the coming weeks, up to 2 months.
We’ll have to see if trhese paediatric doses can be authorised anytime soon.
This is bcos some parents are now anxious hearing of a 4-year old toddler death from covid in HK recently, who has had no previously known medical issues.
On the whole, however, risks for young kids are still low, though somewhat elevated by the tendency of the Omicron to infect the upper airways.
For young kids, do watch out for diarrhoea as one of the potential symptoms of covid in kids.
Kids, esp infants below 1, may not be able to articulate symptoms like headaches, except to cry in distress.
So it is important for parents to be vigilent for symptoms, and signs of distress.
Some symptoms could be diarrhoea, extensive rashes, covid toes, swelling of fingers or toes, fever, coughs, vomiting, blue lips.
Indirect symptoms would be distress crying and inconsolable unhappiness.
Wherever possible, get ready items like thermometers and oximeters to check their vital health signs.
These would be helpful for adults too to track for persistent fevers, or low oxygen levels.
Keep safe, keep cool, keep calm.
US skier says Twitter account suspended after he praised Beijing organisers
Three-time Olympian Aaron Blunck said he was suspended from Twitter after he and his US ski teammates praised China for its “stellar” operations at the Olympic Village, while criticising biased coverage of the Games.
“They have honestly done a stellar job with the whole Covid protocol,” the 25-year-old told reporters in the press room, before criticising biased coverage of the Games. “I didn’t really know what to expect, being stateside you’ve kind of heard some pretty bad media, and that is completely false – it’s actually been phenomenal.”
The 25-year-old said his Twitter account was then suspended, as he resorted to Instagram to protest the social platform’s unexplained decision, reposting a fan’s comment that read: “Aaron Blunck [is] out here telling the truth and getting punished by his own government.”
Biden Administration Lays Out its Asia Strategy
The Biden White House has issued its strategy outline for the Asia-Pacific Region. But while the paper is long on platitudes about re-engagement, it is short on specifics and addresses one element – strengthening the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – which seems pure fantasy.
It delivers an unusually belligerent challenge to Beijing, charging that “the PRC’s coercion and aggression span the globe, but it is most acute in the Indo-Pacific. From the economic coercion of Australia to the conflict along the Line of Actual Control with India to the growing pressure on Taiwan and bullying of neighbors in the East and South China Seas, our allies and partners in the region bear much of the cost of the PRC’s harmful behavior.”
China, it says, “is also undermining human rights and international law, including freedom of navigation, as well as other principles that have brought stability and prosperity to the Indo-Pacific.”
Beyond the saber-rattling, the single most specific point in the 19-page document, titled “The Indo-Pacific Strategy of The United States” and issued on February 12, is the importance now attached to India and its importance to the wider region, not just South Asia and the Indian Ocean. Washington, it says, “supports continued rise and regional leadership” seeing it as increasingly connected to Southeast Asia, as the driving force of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, adding its weight to US traditional regional allies Japan and Australia.
Indeed, the Quad itself is seen as a continuing agreement to be strengthened as a “premier regional grouping,” including playing a leading role in combating the Covid-19 coronavirus and other global health issues – though it has done little enough so far on that front. It also sees the Quad cooperating in areas such as sharing satellite data on maritime issues – a clear hint to countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam which want to keep the US at arm’s length but want access to its information in protecting their seas.
Whether the Quad has such a future and can cooperate with non-members in the region in opposing China’s ambitions remains to be seen. But it is hard to take seriously the contention that the US can do much to “strengthen an empowered and unified ASEAN.” Indeed, ASEAN has become increasingly feeble, its need for consensus proving it incapable of doing more than talk about issues such as the South China Sea and the Myanmar military coup.
Nor is there much attention given to ASEAN’s most important member, economically and strategically, Indonesia, despite its greater success than most fellow members in maintaining other key US objectives – democracy and pluralism.
It does promise to work “with partners inside and outside of the region to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, including by supporting Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities, to ensure an environment in which Taiwan’s future is determined peacefully in accordance with the wishes and best interests of Taiwan’s people.”
But, it says, “As we do so, our approach remains consistent with our One China policy and our longstanding commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiqués, and the Six Assurances – a recognition that the agreement enunciated between then-President Richard Nixon and then-Prime Minister Zhou Enlai in 1972 remains in force in the wake of Donald Trump’s aggressive befriending of Taipei.
The importance of Japan and South Korea, and the relationship between those two, is no surprise. But there is almost no mention of the one key item which dominates so much discourse in East Asia – trade. Donald Trump’s presidency trashed longstanding US trade relations with the region, most specifically abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which had been President Barack Obama’s way of re-engaging the US in the region after years of unproductive focus on the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Eleven years in the making during the presidencies of both George W Bush and Obama, the TPP knit together 12 littoral Pacific nations together to ring-fence China with an agreement to lower both tariff and non-tariff barriers and was designed to reduce the signatories' dependence on Chinese trade and bring the signatories closer to the US orbit. With Biden and the Democrats closely aligned with America’s trade union movement, and with the Republicans in Congress remaining in thrall to Trump, there appears no way forward for the US to return to the 50-year trade liberalization policies that Washington pursued from the end of World War II.
Thus, the main beneficiary of Trump’s policy in withdrawing from the TPP remains China. Yet while this strategy paper’s underlying theme is to limit China’s expansionism, it fails to offer any trade agenda whatsoever beyond a few sentences of empty rhetoric saying the US “will develop new approaches to trade that meet high labor and environmental standards and will govern our digital economies and cross-border data flows according to open principles, including through a new digital economy framework” while working with our partners “to advance resilient and secure supply chains that are diverse, open, and predictable, while removing barriers and improving transparency and information-sharing.”
But in fact, every indication is that instead of “advancing resilient and secure supply chains,” the Biden administration’s domestic industrial policy is to bring back production onshore and attempt to re-industrialize the US through its “build back better” policy, most of which has already been thwarted by Republicans in the Congress.
Meanwhile, China is likely to prove the major beneficiary of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) which includes ASEAN, Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand – but from which India stood aloof, fearful of China’s industrial competitiveness.
RCEP trade gains may be slow to eventuate but the pact is significant.
Meanwhile, the reconstituted TPP, which covers non-tariff barriers and other trade and investment issues in addition to merchandise trade, went ahead without the US, albeit in watered-down form. Now China wants to join and the US does not have a policy because of domestic political opposition.
Although such trade agreements often look more important than they are in practice, the White House paper shows the disconnect between US strategic and trade policies.
So now we all know that all her sources are from the evil USA!
Caring for our kids, really?
Or worrying about the NO TAKERS for the remaining mRNA fake vaccines stucked in cold storage and expiring fast?
Reputation at stake?
Latest news on Ukraine. Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France have reached agreement that there would not be any attacks from either side. This agreement has dampened the evil Americans' scheme to start a war in Europe and let the Europeans kill each other and destroy their countries.
While every European country is celebrating this news, the person that is in most danger is Zelensky. He could be assassinated to create a panic situation for those who wanted a war to start a war despite whatever agreements that have been reached.
The Ukrainians and Europeans better pray hard that Zelensky did not fall victim to an assassin's bullet. The probability of a war is still a clear and present danger as long as the evil Americans did not get what they want and still plotting for it.
Just saw this piece of frightening news on CNA. The effectiveness of the booster shots would fall quickly within months.
The imbeciles would be very happy to say, more boosters, more boosters, once a month!
Whether those countries, Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine have agreed or not to attack each other, it is the USA calling the shots and they could easily derail the agreement with a false flag operation.
When this conflict is over, Ukraine will have to bear the consequences of their contrary actions against the wishes of the USA. The USA wants war by hyping up the impending Russian invasion of Ukraine and yet Ukraine, the victim itself, does not agree with the USA. They even want the USA to show 'proof' that Russia is planning to attack Ukraine. That is a slap on the face of the evil one and when you do that to the evil one, expect to be repaid with bad vibes eventually.
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