Comment by Sir George Turner

[PETA mode]

Oh come on. Just because they collect skin and collagen from the bodies of executed capitalists and democratizers doesn’t make them bad people. I mean, isn’t that way better than using innocent animals?

I could see an ecologically sound market for farm raising Chinese girls to build an “animal free” cosmetics industry.

Besides, the advance of international socialism and Chinese hegemony requires a little blood to be spilled from time to time. Why let perfectly good bodies go to waste when you can fight wrinkles and exploitive Western OILigarchical corporate capitalism at the same time?

[/PETA mode]

Comment by LC-IB-NeilV

All those free tibet stickers have done a lot…not.
The Chi Coms are savages.That tale of the collagen is the most repulsive thing I have heard in a while.Sick bastards

Comment by Ron

Thanks. Misha. I was gonna gleefully go to Wal-Mart today.

Seriously, thanks for making me think about giving our position on China a closer look.

Comment by LC Joseph Dromedary

Thank you, Warspite. Welcome back. It is truly wonderful to see you posting again.

Comment by LC Defense Guy

One of the really galling things about the Chinese is that they already know that Communism doesn’t work and have moved, albeit at a snails pace, towards more free market based systems (economic zones). This, in most cases, has not been accompanied by the freedoms that other free market based countries enjoy and it surely has not replaced the communist dogma that all kids are forced to endure. To be fair, it does for those who perform, up to a point.

For the rest, the jackboot and the ever present hungry stomach. I will be far more careful about buying things with the made in China label from now on, and I am already careful.

I have a friend from China who once informed me that it will never get better, because the average Chinese just wants to be fairly ruled and does not care for the freedoms that we take for granted. The ones who do, she says, just end up leaving, like she did.

Excellent post Misha and as always, excellent comment Warspite.

Comment by TexanPatriot78

Guys, I hate to be a bearer of bad omens, but we’ve done this before…..

Japan, back in the 1930s had a favored trade status as a nation, up until 1940 when FDR got sick of the Japanese wars. Then Japan lost its oil and metal. They attacked us with our own resources, in the form of fuelled up Nakajima and Mitsubishi Fighters and Bombers at Pearl Harbor, The Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, and elsewhere. It wasn’t due to us cutting them off, just want for conquest.

I see China as the next Rising Sun that will try to attack us at some point. It may be a bold reach at us, or may just be antagonism against Taiwan. However, we must be weary of the overtures and demands for more oil from us. China has some off shore, right? They have minerals and metals, right? WTF do they need ours for?

Beware, we’re gonna pay for our complacency.

Comment by plato's dog

The ChiComs are murdering millions and harvesting the bodies? That is just to horrible to believe. Where do you get stats on a closed nation?

Comment by LC Wes, Imperial Mohel

A truly patriotic American company, if it had to obtain cheap imported goods from Asia, would look to more democratic nations like Taiwan, Thailand and South Korea. (And Japan, of course, which has taken quite a bit of the profits they’ve made in trading with the US and reinvested it here; most Japanese auto makers, for example, have built manufacturing plants here in the States.)

And Wal-Mart is hardly the only company doing business with China. Here’s a personal example: when I first moved to the Kansas City area I took a job with House of Lloyd, a large (and now defunct) catalog retailer in the KC suburb of Grandview. Virtually everything HOL offered - including a fair amount of Christian-themed statuary, tchotchkes and knicknacks - came from China, which is notorious for its persecution of Christians. Because of that, I often wondered what the Chinese who assembled this stuff, some of whom may have been Christians themselves, forced to worship in secret, thought of us…

Comment by TexanPatriot78

Jim, I don’t know how to respond to your arrogant little take on this? Pussweed.

Sheesh, nice class you showed to the lady. Jerk.

Comment by Joss

Uh, TP78, how much respect did she actually deserve for trying to indicate that buying from Japan is no different than buying from China when it comes to whether or not you are supporting a massivly evil regime? Maybe that’s not how she meant it, but the tone certainly indicated that she has confused Japan and South Korea with totalitarian regimes that will use their own dead citizens for cosmetics to sell to Europe.

I don’t know squat about Thailand, but I do know from friends and history and so forth that South Korea and Japan are decent reasonably well run countries. I think America is better, but I could see myself living reasonably happily in either of those countries if I was a citizen. They don’t execute people and then make cosmetics out of thier skin.

What the hell kind of people would buy cosmetics made from real human skin anyway? Saying it’s ‘traditional’ just makes it worse. That means they’ve been doing it for a long time now.
If you guys will excuse me, I feel the strong need to vomit.

Comment by LC Defense Guy

If you want to take issue with companies dealing with China, Microsoft and Yahoo deserve a great amount of scorn. Those two are actually using their products to help with the suppression.

Also, what would any rail against the ChiComs be without the inclusion of France, who is actually conducting joint military training with them. You just have to love the French.

Comment by Joss

Bullfeathers. Name 1 thing that is manufactured exclusively in China that would seriously inconvienience people to be without here in the USA.

Comment by Tsar Lazar

Pomoze Bog.

Like it or not, the economy has gone global. Gone are the days when US heavy industry produced most of the consumer goods on the planet, never to return.

China has become dominant among major manufacturing nations. This is only natural; historically, China is where the US and UK were in the 19th-early 20th centuries. Although this makes them dangerous to her neighbors and to the US from an economic standpoint, it is also a plus in that it makes them act in an increasingly pragmatic manner. As the old Communist hard-liners have died, the newer generations have talked the talk but have quietly moved towards capitalism. With their tremendous manpower potential and their rich natural resources, they will dominate low-tech market production in the coming century, and there is nothing that will really be able to prevent that—especially not a pathetic “boycott” of a US department store.
As for military expansionism, the only countries that really need fear are the nations of SE Asia. China lacks the ability to project her vast (but still low-tech) military force to any but her nearest neighbors (other than strategic nuclear weapons, of course, and MAD rules out their use). The PLN is strictly brown-water, and the PLA is largely conscripted and therefore not of a highly professional caliber.
No, folks…we ultimately have little to fear from China. That does not, however, mean we should condone her abysmal human and religious rights record. I question whether there is any difference between using body parts for cosmetics or using fetal stem cells for “research,” but that is a different topic altogether.

Tsar Lazar

Comment by LC Mikenchi

Jim does have a valid point about military build-up and China’s need for more energy:.
“As China’s economy continues to grow at about 9 percent per year and its foreign currency reserves expand with it, China has developed the need for and the means to acquire ever-growing imports of raw materials, especially metals and fossil fuels. According to a study published in the June issue of the “Far Eastern Economic Review,” Chinese energy demand rose 15 percent each year for the past two years, while oil imports surged by 30 percent annually. China is now the world’s second largest consumer of energy, having 12 percent of the global demand and a rate of increase that is four or five times greater than any other country.”

Or this:
“The defense secretary told a plenary session sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies that a report his department has prepared for Congress concludes that China’s defense expenditures are much greater than Chinese officials have acknowledged.

‘Indeed,’ he said, ‘China’s military budget appears to be the third largest in the world, and clearly the largest in Asia.’–Donald Rumsfeld“
China needs our money and tech and they need energy.
“…output from China’s top four oil fields is in decline. By some estimates, the country’s current proven reserves will be depleted in as few as 14 years. Meanwhile, largely untapped petroleum pools believed to lie beneath western China’s desolate Tarim Basin are uneconomic to drill, even with prices at $50 a barrel.”
With little concern for the individual, China seems willing to sink to all time despotic lows to secure their energy and capital, increase the amount of it, and take it, if necessary.

Hmmm…though Jannymae trys to make the point that, ‘We can’t have our Chi-made go away without tears…’ JSD could have been a wee bit nicer…no?

Comment by warspite

“…we’ve done this before…”

For the kind words, I am grateful and feel honored to be able to be among you all. I am not sure I have the ability with words needed to make my friends here understand how, while writing is difficult for me at best, at this point in my life there is no other place I would rather be accepted for my wandering and windy views than these pages. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for the chance.

While it is true that in 1941, Imperial Japan did come charging across the Pacific after us burning Texaco oil and shooting bits of old Buick’s at our guys, the American embargo of oil and scrap metal was modified by Presidential order six months before Pearl Harbor. Despite a generation of historians searching for a “smoking gun”-proof that Franklin Roosevelt took the United States into war through the “back door”-the reality is that the continuation of the critical refusal to issue permits for needed military supplies to the Japanese government was the work of one man-then Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson. Up to that point in time, Acheson had been famous for little else in his career other than being the best friend-and former Eli roommate, Class of ‘11-of Cole Porter. But if it is within the realm of strange fate for one individual to effect the course of Empires, Acheson’s strong dislike for both his boss-FDR-as well as for the brutal Japanese war of aggression against the Chinese led to his “sitting”, in fine bureaucratic fashion, on all Japanese license approval documents. Well, at least he did not write: “Your the top, your Hediki Tojo.”

But for me, the issue is not Chinese pretensions to Great Power status. I am admittedly old-fashioned and have a profound prejudice against Communism-even the Mahayana crypto fascism of the current government on the mainland-but what I will never abide is a situation where they use their extensive Gulag of political prisoners to produce whatever products for exploitation of the American market them deem most profitable. Slavery-for that is exactly what it is, so I call it by its correct name-is an abomination and I will have no truck with such organized and systemic evil. I will fight it, and with all that remains in my heart and soul do whatever I can do to slay this dragon that is the ancient, irreconcilable enemy of all humankind.

And this brings me to my second point as I try-I hope-to tie this together:

“…Our true enemy is based in Mecca…”

Indeed, I find it hard to argue with this statement and would not venture to try. But the issue in Mecca is Sharia law and the radical Wahabist interpretation of that body of rules and regulations compounded over time but generally recognized as being of divine inspiration and more or less “finished” by the early eighth century A.D. One aspect of this Sharia law so favored by our Islamic enemies deals with slavery.

We hate the very notion of it; they accept it and consider the enslavement of non-Muslims to be the natural order of life on this planet. Do I overstate the case? Let us take a peak behind the burkah and you tell me if I am wrong.

The organized trade in human beings is as old as civilization, but it does not improve with age. To their everlasting credit, the gathered churches of the Protestant Reformation in Great Britain and this country began to organize against slavery. In 1807, the slave trade was banned within the British Empire and, as the Royal Navy ruled the waves after Trafalgar, the gross injustice that was the chattel trade of Africans to the Americas was eventually brought to an end. Thirty years later, the institution was ended in all possessions of the Crown. In the United States, only the most injurious and destructive conflict in our history began to expiate the sin that had existed since the nations’ founding. More died in the War Between the States that in all our other wars, combined. Truly were the sins of the father’s visited upon the sons-even to the third and forth generation-as we waded so deeply in blood that there was not a family in the land unaffected, that did not lose a son, a brother, a husband, or a father. Some regions of our country have not recovered from the devastation to this day.

But slavery has a very different history in the Islamic world. I had the occasion to read for this today the diary of Gertrude Bell. This unusual woman was a English Foreign Office official who was a specialist in Arabia. It is not too much to say that her influence in support of a bandit chieftain named Abdul-Aziz al Saud led directly to the modern House of Saud’s triumph over the other clans and pretenders to rule in the deserts of Arabia. During the Great War, when the fortune of the British were at their lowest ebb, the indefatigable Miss Bell was busy organizing the Arabs against the long-dominating Turks. She set up a series of agreements that eventually resulted in the modern United Arab Emirates-a odd fate for a woman to be the George Washington of those principalities-but guess what the sticking point of Bell’s negotiations with all the local sheiks was?

To her everlasting credit-and to the glory of the Anglosphere-even in their darkest moment the British would not compromise on the issue of slavery. If the Arabs wanted to be included among the world of modern, civilized men, they simply had to abandon traditional Islamic teaching with regards to slavery. She insisted; they thought she was mad.

But slavery was in fact not abolished in Saudi Arabia until 1963. Today, the practice is “winked” at in that nation, as it is in most of the statelets of the Gulf. It would seem that Sharia law is making something of a comeback and, as a result, the numbers of slaves is on the rise. This is especially true among young male children. I will leave it to your own imagination to consider why this is so.

For those who would compromise with the Islamic radicals, please remember that a return to Sharia law means today what it has always meant: millions toiling away in the living death that is bondage and perpetual servitude, liberation coming only by an early death, in a grave unmarked. Let us have the moral courage to call our enemies what they in fact are-the merciless opponents of human freedom and progress. The face is the same-tyranny never changes-only the tactics, always brutal, have become even more obscene. Support them and your endorse the slavemaster and the lash. The God I choose to worship hates evil and thrives on virtue but even with my Creator there can be no compromise with slavery; no middle ground with the rebel angel; you are either for it or against it; toleration is not an option.

Did I manage to tie it together? Please decide.

Comment by LC Dutch Expat

Wasn’t this Billy Klintoon’s Brilliant Plan?

It is sickening for sure, because sooner or later we are going to have to fight the Chinese. Not because we want to, but because murdering, tyrannical regines have never been satisfied with what they have. Might come sooner than you think, too. Soon Taiwan could join Korea and Vietnam in the list of countries we fought to keep from Chinese oppression. The score so far: US 0, China 2. Not a good batting average. And the communist chinese have only gotten stronger since the last face-off. Way to go, Wal-Mart & everyone else doing business with China.

Comment by lc ima mommy, Imperial Handmaid

My actual point is that singling Wal-Mart out is disingenuous

I am certainly not trying to add fuel to the friendly fire here, but if that was your point why did you add in the ‘what about Korea? Japan? Thailand?’ stuff? I’m honestly interested in your opinion on that…do you think these countries are just as bad as China? and why?

Comment by Denita TwoDragons

Jim, JannyMae, TexPatriot–whoah! Friendly fire, y’all!

(BTW–Jim, you’re a sight for sore eyes! I haven’t seen you in ages! Hope things are going well with you, hon!)

Anyhoo, I can back JannyMae up on her statement. Most everything, even stuff labeled “Made In America”, has components made exclusively in Asian countries and ESPECIALLY China. Heck, a disturbingly high amount of the parts that go into a Harley Davidson–that shining icon of rugged American individualism–are manufactured overseas now. I’ll try to Google info on that in a moment–let me finish this comment and pour myself some iced tea (most of those glorious tea plants having been cultivated in an Asian country, BTW) first.

There’s embarassingly little we own that is exclusively American, unfortunately. Even the classic American fashion of tee-shirt and denim jeans has origins all over the world–many of them from Communist countries whose biggest labor force is sweatshops. Chances are that cotton-polyester-blend shirt was grown and spun into thread in Egypt, synthesized and extruded into thread in China, woven together on an industrial loom in Thailand, sewn together in Malaysia, printed en masse at a warehouse facility in India, and THEN shipped to New York via a Korean cargo vessel.

To say the LEAST of any electronic items we may have in our household. There is literally NOTHING electronic in you, the reader’s possession that DOESN’T have Asian parts tucked away inside. My husband works in a major semiconductor fabrications facility. In the space of five years they’ve sent more than two-thirds of their labor over the Pond to China. A couple years ago, Hubby trained several high-level Chinese techs who were slated to return to their country and show the rest of the fabs how to do those two-thirds-jobs that used to be handled by Americans. The parts–starting all the way back at the raw silicon–bounce back and forth several times during the chip creation and product assembly process.

Would that we had more American factories here at home–but unfortunately, it’s cheaper for a megacorp to move overseas and hire ten middle-aged Koreans for the price of one young American. And the fact that a company can get away with facility standards that would give an American safety inspector an aneurysm. Not to mention the eco-freaks and NIMBY fanatics who would shit kittens if a company chose to build a manufacturing facility within a hundred miles of their back porch. And I know I’m missing several dozen other factors here, but I’m starting to get really parched and I’m hankering for that iced tea.

Plus I don’t want to muscle in on Warspite’s bandwidth territory…

(Just kidding, Warspite–I always love your comments, hon!)

–TwoDragons

Comment by Elephant Man

Oh great…300M US-versus-2Billion them…eeek!

Not to worry. General Turgidson said it best - CLICK HERE

Comment by warspite

“… muscle in on Warspite’s bandwidth territory…”

I do go on, and that’s a fact. But I also liked this:

“…how to deal with the numerically superior.”

As it jibed so well with this:

“…General Turgidson said it best…”

Here is my take from a famous poem that nobody ever reads:

Blood thought he knew the native mind;
He said you must be firm, but kind.
A mutiny resulted.
I shall never forget the way
That Blood stood upon this awful day
Preserved us all from death.
He stood upon a little mound
Cast his lethargic eyes around,
And said beneath his breath:
Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.
-Hilaire Belloc, The Modern Traveller”, 1896

Comment by Jim, Sloop New Dawn, Galveston TX

JannyMae,

First, my apologies for mauling your name. Hazards of high-speed blogreading & commenting while at work.

Seocond, my apology for bashing you as the the troll I took you to be. That assumption is my fault.

/Apologies, off.

That said, I stand by my nailing your ass for your moral equivalizing of several disparate, yet productive and honorable Asian societies to a provably evil Asian dictatorship.

And yes, I’m very well informed about the hidden percentages of offshore content in many alllegedly Made in USA products. Come survey my boat; you’ll find an astonishingly small percentage of such items.

Regarding the theory of economic involvement leading to greater freedoms…. doesn’t prove-out in practice here.

The average Chinese has no more political freedom than existed in Reagan’s era. Chinese students don’t come here to study PoliSci….they come for hard-engineering courses, advanced technology degrees, and all manner of other strategically valuable studies.

Wal-Mart is the main purveyor of Chinese goods. That doesn’t make the other importers less culpable. A pox on ‘em all.

But the other Asian nations do not enslave their peoples, nor market their corpses to the highest bidder. Nor do they strive to build up a huge military, whihc is being aggresively equipped with weapons reflecting a purposely offense-oriented T.O.E.

And Denita? I was absent here due to my loathing of all things TypeKey. And this commment engine ain’t much better. I have less personal response-lag even before my morning coffee. Do fire an e-mail to me though?….. need help re-securing your blog-link.

Jim
Sloop New Dawn
Galveston, TX

TX patriot. Call me pussweed one more time, and you risk finding out what Kim DuToit was talking about here.

Or, we can sit down over beers and be friends.

I prefer friends. I can handle enemies.

Comment by Guido Cabrone

We’ll just have to shoot seven times each.

Don’t you mean twenty-one, Boss? Mozambique drill, you know.

(And, yes, I remember the Swiss response to Wilhelm…^grin^)

As far as boycotting Wal-Mart, etc. Where I live, I have very little choice in the matter. The nearest NON-Wal-Mart is thirty miles away. (Other than a small Sears franchise. (VERY small)) So, when I do shop Wally’s, I take pains to read the “Made in” label, and, if I can purchase something made in another country, I do so.

In my case, it has to do with the fact that “Overseas Competition”, (ie, Mainland China), drove my previous employer into bankruptcy. Seems that not enough people would pay the extra 20% that our products, (made in Kansas), cost compared to products made in China.

Comment by Cheapshot

Thanks warspite for

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.”

I’m thinking this is where Bush paraphrazed “No one deserves to be a slave. No one is fit to be a master”

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Bars and recreation venues in rural or urban areas offer to their visitors the excitement and the sportsmanship of a famous table-played game, called pool or billiard. On the billiards table’s totally flat surface, pool game fans strike, with the use …