8 posts tagged “communism”

I had been under the impression that Red Chinese automaker BYD was a Toyota licensee, though in Autocade I stopped short of making this assertion since I had no proof of it. I did think it was odd that BYD has Mitsubishi-derived engines. It turns out there is no connection, but when you see things like the below you have to wonder.
   Two years ago, BYD issued this photograph of its upcoming model, the F1. It since renamed the car the F0, because it claimed it didn’t to get into a legal dispute with the Formula 1 people.

   Look familiar? While BYD might not want legal trouble with F1, it doesn’t seem to mind legal trouble with Toyota. Here’s a publicity photograph for the Toyota Aygo:    BYD’s general manager, Xia Zhibing, has been quoted as saying, ‘The BYD F1 is a model developed by ourselves and we hold the intellectual property right for it.’
   I guess there’s no shame at BYD, and that the ideals of truthfulness in Confucianism haven’t made a return to parts of Red China.
   Come on, Mr Xia, the only contribution BYD has made to the 2007 photo is in Adobe Photoshop! If you are going to lie about it, don’t make it so obvious by using someone else’s publicity pic first! At least use CAD to generate something new!
   Or this could be some form of getting war reparations from Japan, but that Toyota hasn’t been informed.
   And this is the company that Warren Buffett has put money in to. Somehow I think that if any BYD cars ever make it to the US as Mr Buffett intends, Toyota’s going slap a big court order on them, and not a single one will make it on to the market.
   If you look at the F3 and F6, BYD’s larger models, the doors look identical to those of the Toyota Corolla E120 and Toyota Camry XV30, but the front- and rear-end styling has been modified to resemble some of Honda’s work. I understand the dimensions are slightly different but that an expert should be able to prove objective similarity in the shapes of the doors—or enough to stop BYDs from going on sale in many markets.
   The F3 hybrid, the world’s first plug-in car, beating Chevrolet with its Volt, might have an innovative powertrain, but what is the likelihood that has come from somewhere else?
   BYD shows how out of touch parts of Red Chinese commerce is with, well, honesty and decency. I’m happy to deal with mainland Chinese firms, but only those that I am connected to by blood or referred to by family—and governments should not be signing things like free-trade agreements with the Politburo in Beijing till some of these intellectual property issues can be sorted out.
   New Zealand, of course, is a trifle too naïve, with its free-trade agreement.

I entered Hong Kong as many of us old colonials would: with a British passport (air hair lair, what) and a falling-apart Hong Kong Permanent Identity Card (PIC).
   I did have a few problems with the latter, because it was issued in 1995, and it did not have much of the information that the new ones now contain, like your thumbprint, a photograph without a Melrose Place hairstyle and samples of my DNA contained in hermetically sealed vials of sweat, or whatever these newfangled things they have nowadays on identity cards.
   (In fact, I had problems with my British passport, notably at Waterloo Station where the passport controller insisted I was not British and had to queue up with foreigners. It was ironic that she was black and was herself practising apartheid. I had been British for longer than she had, thank you very much. The matter was ultimately raised with the PM after correspondence with the British High Commissioner, the Foreign Secretary, and the Shadow Foreign Secretary was ignored. I was going to expose all this and had some Fleet Street friends willing to aid and abet in the cause of true patriotism, but then HRH Princess Margaret went and inconveniently died on us.
   Since then, armed with this correspondence, I have not had any problems entering the United Kingdom on a British passport. I was under the impression we overseas British had the same Queen whose ‘Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance’. Funnily enough, this is respected in France and Germany, even the US where we are allies on the War on Terror, but not Britain herself. But I digress.)
   I was still let through because the PIC number matched what was noted on my passport, though the controller, a very charming lady by the name of Y. T. Chan, advised I should get the PIC changed ASAP.
   Fast forward to today. We are very law-abiding, we British, so I began checking. There’s nothing at the British High Commission site about the PIC, but the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region website does have an application form and some notes.
   The problem, as I discovered, is that Britons like me cannot get a new PIC without applying for a HKSAR passport at the same time, which entails becoming a Communist.
   And I know from experience that my definition of ‘Chinese citizen’ somehow differs from that of the Politburo politician and the Beijing bureaucrat.
   My father did not escape from the Commies in 1949 just so his son could get into bed with the Reds.
   My mother did not insist on emigrating in 1976 to avoid the perceived peril of 1997 just so her son could get into bed with the Reds.
   I am proudly Chinese. I am proud of my culture. I am proud of my heritage. But I do not believe that the chaps who came to occupy my family’s land in ’49 have much of a right to it.
   Or the chaps that overran Beijing.
   Not while the Chinese people lack self-determination, a basic requirement under the UN Charter if China wishes to call itself a state.
   Some of my family members are technically, if not willingly, communists, but it doesn’t mean I have to join them.
   All I want is to retain my nationality as a British subject and get a PIC to which I believe I am rightly entitled by my domicil of origin.
   Back in 1995, this was perfectly feasible and I was under the assumption that the Reds would continue respecting the status quo ante when it came to administrative matters like this for an uninterrupted 50 years. And since when have Hong Kongers gone and pissed off Beijing? Well, apart from every June 4?
   We have contributed quite nicely to the Pekingese capitalist public purse, and the sayings of the old Chinese profit.
   I do hope, one day, there will be a united China, possibly a commonwealth of independent states. I also hope to see self-determination by the Chinese people exercised in my lifetime. But I have zero affinity with communist régimes, anywhere in the world, and certainly won’t be looking at changing my allegiance from HM the Queen, even if modern Britain is in a mess and it gave us Gary Glitter and selected nonces. There are some of us who are proud to be old colonials, who remember what it used to mean to be British, even if it is couched in some idealist, double-decker-bus-and-cobbled-street world where John Steed could poke a baddie with his brolley—and without us colonials kowtowing to any body, thank you very much.
   And quite simply, I agree more even with a faded modern Blairbrown-shaded Britain subservient to some Brussels Bonaparte than with a totalitarian régime that did its best to try to knock some of my family off, or shove them into jail on no charge.
   There is quite a price to be paid for loyalty to Her Britannic Majesty, but there you have it. It is a choice I quite publicly make.
   Tomorrow: a visit to the High Commission to see what HM Government can do. If they even care. Let’s hope they do, more so than after the Waterloo incident.

The reasons I haven’t been fully supportive of John McCain have largely been from GOP-voting friends who have met him. They speak of a man who seems empty with a cold handshake. McCain supporters might say that that is a sign of a man who hates political functions and prefers getting on with the job. I guess it could be seen both ways.
   He has been the butt of my own jokes. On television a couple of years ago, I asked the audience, ‘So what party is this guy with again? I can never tell.’ There has been a perception of McCain being not conservative enough and even in the lead-up to his party’s nomination for the presidency there were members of the religious right who felt the senator from Arizona could not possibly be their guy. Hence, former Gov. Mike Huckabee looked more palatable to them; while the technocrats could not fathom anyone like Huckabee getting the nomination.
   Examine McCain’s record and he’s a pretty consistent conservative, from his time in Congress (where he was a supporter of Ronald Reagan), so this perception may have been an invention of the media and his opponents. Remember, when he and George W. Bush were battling it out in 2000, things got dirty as both ran attack ads. McCain came off pretty terribly.
   In fact, when I looked at McCain’s record today I am not too sure why there may be some liberal support for him, although he might be able to use that to his advantage with the voting public. Unless people like George W. Bush have been even more staunchly conservative and have offended those liberals.
   While voting for the War on Terror Sen. McCain also had amendments to bills added, such as ensuring that the US did not engage in illegal torture of its PoWs. That is easily explained: if you were beaten up and tortured yourself over a five-and-a-half year period, you’d be pretty averse to seeing another human being go through the same thing.
   I write of him now not because I have suddenly picked up a GOP baton and figured he’s the best choice for President, but because he hasn’t really had any time in the limelight.
   The media are chanting either Obama or Clinton, although more seem to be wondering why Hillary Clinton is still in the race. She must either know she’s a fading cause célèbre, or the Clinton fear-mongering tentacles of Arkancide run deeper in the MSM than we can give them credit. Unless she has a genuine chance, prepared to come on stream if something happens to Obama.
   I have written about Barack Obama on this blog because being a minority I want to redress the balance of some of the racist tendencies of some MSM coverage. Politically I do not agree with him any more than I agree with many of the contenders for their parties’ nominations. From memory most of the candidates have a 60 to 70 per cent similarity with my views, which makes you wonder if they are just all saying the right things.
   I feel similarly when I defend John McCain. He is the subject of less media coverage (which is the bias here), and he is the subject of ageism as America goes around with this notion that only a younger person can be a dynamic president.
   This is not just a US phenomenon: the west loves the idea of a young, glamorous leader.
   The US’s finest hours have come from experienced, wise presidents, backed up by strong and wise first ladies. JFK did not live long enough, in my view, to have given the country a “finest hour” in his presidency, though he was inspiring; historical presidents such as Adams, Lincoln, Hoover and FDR were hardly young men.
   In this election, Americans need to consider not just the candidate’s stated position but what their past says about their characters—not what the MSM, attack ads and campaign lies say.
   They need to strip away the biases of age, race and gender as each principal candidate has suffered from prejudice of one sort or the other.
   They need to examine McCain’s 27 years in elected office, without the rhetoric, just as they need to examine Obama’s 12 and Clinton’s eight. (If Obama is inexperienced, according to Clinton, then what does that make her?) And if we are to consider Clinton’s time as First Lady of the country and of Arkansas as she wishes us to, then the record of Lt Cmdr McCain and later Capt McCain needs to be considered, too.
   Because the next four years are not about trying to restore Camelot in the White House: they are about putting a person in the White House that can only preach honour but has shown it.
   Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, what we foreigners want to see is trustworthy leadership. Honour begins at home, and who do you want saying, ‘The buck stops here’?
   If voters dislike spin then who has offered the least spin, the candidate on whom you can rely most? Or that other countries can rely on most: that America’s enemies will know their days are numbered, that America’s allies will know they have a real friend, and that those who fell out with America know that the nation will in fact consistently and genuinely stand for freedom and liberty?
   Men like me were brought up to admire the US for its service to humanity and freedom, and its opposition to Communism, and we want to admire it again. It should not be a country perceived as slogan-heavy and substance-free, yet the perception has shifted toward this since the 1960s. A candidate who resorts to such techniques does not necessarily fit in the 2008 scene and, sadly, that is how I perceive Sen. Clinton. If McCain is really a maverick, then he might shake things up as much as people hope Obama will.
   This should be a race between McCain and Obama, and the next months, hopefully, will reveal it is just that.

I see Sen. Clinton has resorted to even more attacks on Sen. Obama, all of which smack of desperation and come through to me 7,000-plus miles away as tiresome. God only knows what the American people have to put up with on a far more frequent basis, especially if it is in my consciousness in a foreign country.
   The Clinton camp has not denied sending out a picture of Sen. Obama on one of his many visits back to Kenya, wearing traditional elder garb. Its intention: to show how “foreign” Sen. Obama is. More to the point, to show how “un-American” he is. Wear traditional costume? You are not wholesome enough to be American, in that Ward and June Cleaver way.
   You see, there is a theory that the Clinton side must have in that it is considered culturally sensitive for a white American to adopt his or her host’s costumes, but it is considered odd for a black American to do the same.
   Despite the large African-descended community in the United States, traditional African costume has not entered the general consciousness of the country. Sen. Obama, wearing the costume of his father’s homeland, looks very different to the well suited figure that Americans have seen during the campaign. He has tried to be race-neutral for the most part, rightly resisting to use that aspect in a campaign that is heated enough.
   The Clinton campaign is hoping this photo will be the undoing of Obama in Ohio and Texas. I do not think so. Americans are just too darned smart for this to work.
   There is nothing wrong with the image but for the fact that it may have come from the Clinton campaign, released with an obvious belief that it is scandalous.
   It shouldn’t be, of course, but Clinton has now made this campaign about race—or her own racism. (I suppose it might not be as bad as showing your tax liabilities.)
   Nevertheless, having a black campaign manager is not going to make her look whiter than white on this issue, if you will pardon the one attempt at humour in this post.
   These attacks have fallen flat before. Anti-Obama types and anti-Islamists stressed that his middle name is Hussein. That proved ineffective for numerous reasons. Earlier in the year, in stressing her credentials, Clinton said that it took a president (LBJ) to make the Civil Rights’ Movement effective—which was seen by many as undermining the work of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. For me, that brought up the 2004 incident when Clinton joked that Mahatma Gandhi was someone who pumped gas for a living in St Louis, Mo.
   While I tried to give Sen. Clinton the benefit of the doubt on her incidents, I am not so sure about the newest—and it wasn’t helped by the Clinton campaign’s reactions. Skemono, a fellow blogger, expresses it better than I could, quoting campaign manager Michelle Williams. I imagine that Skemono is better versed on the topic, being inside the US.
   Put these incidents together and it paints a sorry picture of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s élitism and what she regards as “American”. Obviously Indians need not apply, even the great man Gandhi. I imagine in her view blacks need the white hand to help, the freedom of the Civil War given to them benevolently, and civil rights by President Lyndon Johnson.
   Even if Sen. Clinton is not a racist, and it’s actually likely she isn’t, I believe she is not above using race for political capital.
   However, she has miscalculated things. The United States of America is founded on immigrants. It all depends on when one arrived. Even the native American, the first one there, probably migrated from Asia.
   If Sen. Clinton had a good grasp on the Hispanic vote, then I suspect she lost some potential supporters today.

Obama, the role model
Why should not Obama, whose father was an immigrant who made good on the American Dream, adopt the clothing of his homeland? Many of us who have the privilege of visiting the country from which our ancestors came would do the same. It shows Barack Obama to be a proud man, and if he is willing to celebrate his heritage, then he comes with a sense of self-respect.
   A person who is willing to celebrate their heritage, at Barack Obama’s level, can be a good role model for many others who did not consider it.
   You are only as good as your dignity, and Sen. Obama has shown that.
   While I will defend Sen. Obama, I cannot be said to be a fan of his. I do not agree with all of his policies, and I even agree with Sen. Clinton that he lacks specificity to field a credible campaign if he were nominated. I am unsure of his foreign policy credentials and how he will deal with régimes that attack the values of freedom and democracy—on that Sen. Clinton should attack him. There are signs, which conservatives are prepared to cite in their opposition, of Obama’s extreme left tendencies.
   However, I would rather see a dignified man enter the White House than a woman who resorts to playground bully tactics. Though out of the current front-runners I would rather not see any of them enter.
   Campaign and attack all you want—but do not take it down to this level.

Experience
Today on National Radio here in New Zealand, Sen. Clinton stressed her foreign policy credentials, saying she did not need an instruction manual or advisers to deal with the matter.
   The last time I looked, Sen. Obama had 12 years in elected office versus her eight.
   On a day like this, I am not sure if it is worth much—even if I agree with Sen. Clinton that she has been clearer on her foreign policy during her campaign. (I won’t bring more of her prior positions on foreign policy into this yet.)
   And if she refers to the years as First Lady and wishes to count them as part of her ‘experience’, then she must stand by her decisions at that time. Unfortunately, Sen. Clinton only stands by the ones she thinks makes her look good.
   Her Wal-mart support for cheap Chinese labour and her pro-NAFTA stance were fairly consistent positions during her time as First Lady of Arkansas and as First Lady.
   If Americans are upset by what they saw as a preemptive strike by President Bush on Iraq, perhaps they need to be reminded that President Clinton did the same in Kosovo. If she supported that as the President’s wife, and she supported the war on Iraq, can Democrats and those opposed to the war trust her?
   This is not a campaign about substance, as Sen. Clinton has stressed that it should be. And she has had a major hand in taking that substance away.
   Reading the blogosphere I have found Democrats who believe Clinton has ‘swift-boated’ Obama.

These tactics aren’t presidential
I would not want, as a citizen of a western country that has a history with the United States, and which sacrificed lives for the sake of freedom alongside members of the US armed forces, to think that Sen. Clinton’s pettiness and pit-bull tactics will affect the way I do business as a New Zealander.
   And being part of a family that has been in the US for a century, I do have a stake: to ensure my cousins and an aunt are not living in a place that has a questionable, élitist leader with dictatorial tendencies.
   The in-fighting can only be good for the Republican Party, whose lead candidate, Sen. John McCain, has not captured the public’s attention as well. Attacks on him have not really held up, either. A divided Democratic Party is just what the GOP needs, and they have Sen. Hillary Clinton to thank for it.

I found this on the Informer’s blog here on Vox. Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, who was senior policy adviser to the Department of Education under the Reagan Administration, talks about the dumbing-down of the United States and how education has been set on a socialist path by Marxists. She has written a book called The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, which you can download free of charge in PDF format from her site.
   From the preface, with footnotes omitted and some paragraphing changed for clarity:

… Achievement of Students, Key Points: U. S. twelfth graders scored below the international average and among the lowest of the 21 TIMSS nations in both mathematics and science general knowledge in the final year of secondary school. (p. 24)
   Obviously, something is terribly wrong when a $6,330 per pupil expenditure produces such pathetic results. This writer has visited private schools which charge $1,000-per-year in tuition which enjoy superior academic results. Parents of home-schooled children spend a maximum of $1,000-per-year and usually have similar excellent results. …
   The desire by “resisters” to prove their case has been so strong that they have continued to amass-over a thirty- to fifty-year period-what must surely amount to tons of materials containing irrefutable proof, in the education change agents’ own words, of deliberate, malicious intent to achieve behavioral changes in students/parents/society which have nothing to do with commonly understood educational objectives. Upon delivery of such proof, “resisters” are consistently met with the “shoot the messenger” stonewalling response by teachers, school boards, superintendents, state and local officials, as well as the supposedly objective institutions of academia and the press.
   This resister’s book, or collection of research in book form, was put together primarily to satisfy my own need to see the various components which led to the dumbing down of the United States of America assembled in chronological order-in writing. Even I, who had observed these weird activities taking place at all levels of government, was reluctant to accept a malicious intent behind each individual, chronological activity or innovation, unless I could connect it with other, similar activities taking place at other times. This book, which makes such connections, has provided for me a much-needed sense of closure. …
   In retrospect, I had just found out that the United States was engaged in war. People write important books about war: books documenting the battles fought, the names of the generals involved, the names of those who fired the first shot. This book is simply a history book about another kind of war:
   * one fought using psychological methods;
   * a one-hundred-year war;
   * a different, more deadly war than any in which our country has ever been involved;
   * a war about which the average American hasn't the foggiest idea.
   The reason Americans do not understand this war is because it has been fought in secret-in the schools of our nation, using our children who are captive in classrooms. The wagers of this war are using very sophisticated and effective tools:
   * Hegelian Dialectic (common ground, consensus and compromise)
   * Gradualism (two steps forward; one step backward)
   * Semantic deception (redefining terms to get agreement without understanding) …
   Much of this book contains quotes from government documents detailing the real purposes of American education:
   * to use the schools to change America from a free, individual nation to a socialist, global “state,” just one of many socialist states which will be subservient to the United Nations Charter, not the United States Constitution;
   * to brainwash our children, starting at birth, to reject individualism in favor of collectivism;
   * to reject high academic standards in favor of OBE/ISO 1400/90006 egalitarianism;
   * to reject truth and absolutes in favor of tolerance, situational ethics and consensus;
   * to reject American values in favor of internationalist values (globalism);
   * to reject freedom to choose one’s career in favor of the totalitarian K-12 school-to-work/OBE process, aptly named “limited learning for lifelong labor,” coordinated through United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.
   Only when all children in public, private and home schools are robotized-and believe as one-will World Government be acceptable to citizens and able to be implemented without firing a shot. The attractive-sounding “choice” proposals will enable the globalist elite to achieve their goal: the robotization (brainwashing) of all Americans in order to gain their acceptance of lifelong education and workforce training-part of the world management system to achieve a new global feudalism.

   There’s more at www.deliberatedumbingdown.com. It’s useful food for thought in our technocratically biased society, and I think we can see some of the same things happening in our own educational system and media.

‘I will abolish any court I like. I don’t care if people never voted for that. I am supreme!’

‘Hey, I pass laws all the time that say that any crime I did a few years ago was always perfectly legal. Anyone in my position would.’

‘Do you want to say something against me politically? Of course you can. You just have to meet all the requirements of this new law I’ve passed. Sucker.’

‘Yes, you will find yourself in contempt if you go around making fun of me or any Parliamentary sessions we have. I could have you prosecuted. That’s the fun of being a dictator.’

‘Why should I meet with the Dalai Lama? He’s a dickwad. I’m happier cosying up to Beijing.’

‘What economic policy? As long as the people remain poor, they will give me loyalty.’

‘Screw you. I’ve got my BMWs.’

   What a great legacy Kim Jong Il the Labour Government has left North Korea New Zealand.
   And National’s response: ‘Duh … Euh … Um … Screw it, let’s put that Coldplay track on again and see if we can have a party for under-40 Aucklanders.’

Despite my opposition to the Red Chinese Politburo, I think within my lifetime I will see China become a free republic.
   I see the growth of Confucianism on the mainland. And that must lead to some questioning over its political structure.
   I see such heroines as Madam Anna Chennault (陳香梅), widow of Gen Claire L. Chennault, back off from a totally staunch anti-Beijing position, as has Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀), whose opinion I value.
   I see the erection of the portrait of Sun Yat-sen (孫中山), the founder of the Chinese Republic, at Tiananmen Square.
   While there are massive problems surrounding corruption, censorship, individual freedoms of speech, gathering and religion, poverty, and human rights, not to mention the usual Red desire to spread Bolshevism throughout the world, I can’t see the Communists holding on in a post-Olympic era without some kind of shift.
   Until then I remain a staunch defender of the Republic, the proper and free one founded on liberty, nationhood and equality.

Why did Vladimir Putin attack the US most recently? Simple: he’s been watching the American MSM and seeing how division has crept in to the United States, and figures, ‘I’d rather go back to that old CCCP system. If we follow this democratic route that the US wants us to, we’ll become divided and fight one another. I’ll have a population that doesn’t even vote for the most part, and half the bunch spends the rest of the time hating the guy at the top. I might as well side with the Red Chinese: at least they are keeping their population in check with few revolutionary elements that get out of hand, depriving them of their basic human rights.’