AMERICAN DUPLICITY

TONY KEVIN–At the political level, Morrison and his ministers are daily digging deeper the hole they are in, too proud to apologize to China for their aggressive clumsiness. It is a dangerous moment in a hitherto tranquil enough Australia -China relationship based on mutual economic interest.

Pompeo’s personal attack on an Australian state premier — however excessive and misplaced it was — might have been seen by him and Morrison as a useful distraction from this larger crisis. The U.S. ambassador in Canberra — a Trump appointee — hastily backtracked, trying to cover for Pompeo’s crude bullying language, which was evoking resentful Australian public responses.

THE SAKER—The Belarussian authorities have declared that “hundreds” of men (supposedly Russians) have been sent to Belarus with nefarious intentions.  Lukashenko has since officially confirmed that he got this info from the Ukrainian SBU. The men themselves were described as terrorists, insurgents, members of the “Wagner” PMC, subversives, etc. and their goals were described as killing Lukashenko, triggering a new “maidan” in Belarus, create chaos, etc. Frankly, the Belarusian authorities never got their story straight and, frankly again, this really makes no difference at all. 

CALEB MAUPIN—Caleb’s chats are the ideal tool for those who wish to acquire a solid understanding of contemporary history in an easy, accessible manner. In this episode Caleb talks about imperialism—global monopoly capitalism—and how it has destroyed and is now aggressively destroying even America’s infrastructure, not to mention the population’s economic security. We see that in a tidal wave of artificially produced problems, intractable problems that only arise when we live under capitalism, not due to lack of resources or human capabilities. In America today, the world’s citadel of imperialism, many citizens have no access to clean running water. Many are homeless. Many are unemployed and under employed, living in the “gig economy”, whose wages are pitiful and benefits non-existent. Almost 30% lack fast internet access. The healthcare system has long been a disgrace and a scandal—yet nothing is really done, except apply glorified bandaids, like Obamacare. 

GODFREE ROBERTS—China is home to four of the world’s five largest unicorns, led by Alibaba’s Ant Group, which has a US$150 billion valuation. The total value of all known unicorns in the world is US$1.9 trillion, equivalent to the GDP of Italy. Vehicle sales rose 15% in July. Sales of sedans, SUVs, and commercial vehicles increased to 2.08 million units, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said. Tesla’s made-in-China cars are quality market leaders while Tesla’s US-made vehicles are scoring the lowest for quality. The average passenger car in China gets 37.2 quality complaints per 10,000 cars over the last quarter. Over the same period, Made-in-China Model 3 only received 0.7 complaints – topping the chart.

STEPHEN SEFTON—The dependence of international human rights NGOs on corporate and government funding and on publicity via corporate media and public relations over time has generated the osmosis of corrupt corporate practice into the human rights industry. Writers like Cory Morningstar have analyzed exhaustively how this takeover by corporate culture of the “non-profit industrial complex serves hegemony as a sophisticated fine-tuned symbiotic mechanism in a continuous state of flux and refinement.