Obama’s Weapons Deals with India are Nothing to Be Proud of (China Daily, People’s Republic of China)
In the last 24 hours, the state-run newspapers in China emitted two cold blasts directed at the United States. One relates to President Obama’s trip to India, and the other the U.S. midterm elections
Although much of the attention surrounding President Obama’s trip to India focused on Pakistan’s reaction, the other elephant in the Indo-Asian room has also been watching carefully. Columnist Chen Weihua of the China Daily, in an article headlined Obama’s Weapons Deals with India are Nothing to Be Proud of, hits hard at the $ 10 billion in deals that are meant to create 50,000 U.S. defense industryjobs in the United States.
For the China Daily, Chen Weihua writes in part:
With U.S. unemployment staying stubbornly above 9.5 percent for 15 consecutive months, Obama promised that the trip would focus on job creation.
But the approximately 50,000 new U.S. jobs that could be created by the India business deals worth $ 10 billion are mostly in the defense industry. These are jobs to build weapons that could escalate a regional arms race. They are hardly jobs to be proud of.
Given the lobbying of the U.S. defense industry which employs an estimated 3 million people, it’s perhaps not surprising that the U.S. president serves as a broker for military contractors. America is eager to replace Russia as the biggest arms supplier to India, the world’s largest arms importer last year.
Obama should ask himself why Muslims in Indonesia, where he spent part of his childhood, are staging protests rather that welcoming him. He hasn’t acted to end the Afghanistan War as he promised. Rather, he has made it his own war. It’s now the longest war in U.S. history.
Obama should face up to reality and stop living in denial. He should tell the American people some hard truths. Companies that have secured deals in India are the same ones that have moved tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs overseas.
In the second article from the Chinese from the state-run Global Times, headlined China the Universal Scapegoat in America’s ‘Ugly’ Midterm Polls, U.S. correspondent John Gong writes about how American politicians have wrongly demonized China in order to win votes in the just-passed midterm elections.
For the Global Times, John Gong writes in part:
Elections are always ugly. And the ugliness of the 2010 midterm election in the U.S. were especially distinguished by its vicious, rampant, and xenophobic campaign of China-bashing.
For the first time in history, from Detroit to Houston and New York to LA, using China as a scapegoat for every U.S. economic problem became a popular bipartisan sport in congressional the mud-wrestling.
China-bashing TV advertisements have showcased gongs, dragons, cheesy music, red communist flags, a flood of invading merchandise and insatiable Chinese consumers. Some of the ads have clearly touched on the sensitive battle line of race, casting a profound shadow over the lives of millions of Chinese Americans.
What’s so alarming is that anti-China feeling in the U.S. appears to be a broad-based and long-lasting trend. If this dangerous trend isn’t dealt with properly, it could be an explosive issue in future Sino-U.S. relations.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
Obama’s Weapons Deals with India are Nothing to Be Proud of (China Daily, People’s Republic of China)
In the last 24 hours, the state-run newspapers in China emitted two cold blasts directed at the United States. One relates to President Obama’s trip to India, and the other the U.S. midterm elections
Although much of the attention surrounding President Obama’s trip to India focused on Pakistan’s reaction, the other elephant in the Indo-Asian room has also been watching carefully. Columnist Chen Weihua of the China Daily, in an article headlined Obama’s Weapons Deals with India are Nothing to Be Proud of, hits hard at the $ 10 billion in deals that are meant to create 50,000 U.S. defense industryjobs in the United States.
For the China Daily, Chen Weihua writes in part:
With U.S. unemployment staying stubbornly above 9.5 percent for 15 consecutive months, Obama promised that the trip would focus on job creation.
But the approximately 50,000 new U.S. jobs that could be created by the India business deals worth $ 10 billion are mostly in the defense industry. These are jobs to build weapons that could escalate a regional arms race. They are hardly jobs to be proud of.
Given the lobbying of the U.S. defense industry which employs an estimated 3 million people, it’s perhaps not surprising that the U.S. president serves as a broker for military contractors. America is eager to replace Russia as the biggest arms supplier to India, the world’s largest arms importer last year.
Obama should ask himself why Muslims in Indonesia, where he spent part of his childhood, are staging protests rather that welcoming him. He hasn’t acted to end the Afghanistan War as he promised. Rather, he has made it his own war. It’s now the longest war in U.S. history.
Obama should face up to reality and stop living in denial. He should tell the American people some hard truths. Companies that have secured deals in India are the same ones that have moved tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs overseas.
In the second article from the Chinese from the state-run Global Times, headlined China the Universal Scapegoat in America’s ‘Ugly’ Midterm Polls, U.S. correspondent John Gong writes about how American politicians have wrongly demonized China in order to win votes in the just-passed midterm elections.
For the Global Times, John Gong writes in part:
Elections are always ugly. And the ugliness of the 2010 midterm election in the U.S. were especially distinguished by its vicious, rampant, and xenophobic campaign of China-bashing.
For the first time in history, from Detroit to Houston and New York to LA, using China as a scapegoat for every U.S. economic problem became a popular bipartisan sport in congressional the mud-wrestling.
China-bashing TV advertisements have showcased gongs, dragons, cheesy music, red communist flags, a flood of invading merchandise and insatiable Chinese consumers. Some of the ads have clearly touched on the sensitive battle line of race, casting a profound shadow over the lives of millions of Chinese Americans.
What’s so alarming is that anti-China feeling in the U.S. appears to be a broad-based and long-lasting trend. If this dangerous trend isn’t dealt with properly, it could be an explosive issue in future Sino-U.S. relations.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
Obama’s Weapons Deals with India are Nothing to Be Proud of (China Daily, People’s Republic of China)
In the last 24 hours, the state-run newspapers in China emitted two cold blasts directed at the United States. One relates to President Obama’s trip to India, and the other the U.S. midterm elections
Although much of the attention surrounding President Obama’s trip to India focused on Pakistan’s reaction, the other elephant in the Indo-Asian room has also been watching carefully. Columnist Chen Weihua of the China Daily, in an article headlined Obama’s Weapons Deals with India are Nothing to Be Proud of, hits hard at the $ 10 billion in deals that are meant to create 50,000 U.S. defense industryjobs in the United States.
For the China Daily, Chen Weihua writes in part:
With U.S. unemployment staying stubbornly above 9.5 percent for 15 consecutive months, Obama promised that the trip would focus on job creation.
But the approximately 50,000 new U.S. jobs that could be created by the India business deals worth $ 10 billion are mostly in the defense industry. These are jobs to build weapons that could escalate a regional arms race. They are hardly jobs to be proud of.
Given the lobbying of the U.S. defense industry which employs an estimated 3 million people, it’s perhaps not surprising that the U.S. president serves as a broker for military contractors. America is eager to replace Russia as the biggest arms supplier to India, the world’s largest arms importer last year.
Obama should ask himself why Muslims in Indonesia, where he spent part of his childhood, are staging protests rather that welcoming him. He hasn’t acted to end the Afghanistan War as he promised. Rather, he has made it his own war. It’s now the longest war in U.S. history.
Obama should face up to reality and stop living in denial. He should tell the American people some hard truths. Companies that have secured deals in India are the same ones that have moved tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs overseas.
In the second article from the Chinese from the state-run Global Times, headlined China the Universal Scapegoat in America’s ‘Ugly’ Midterm Polls, U.S. correspondent John Gong writes about how American politicians have wrongly demonized China in order to win votes in the just-passed midterm elections.
For the Global Times, John Gong writes in part:
Elections are always ugly. And the ugliness of the 2010 midterm election in the U.S. were especially distinguished by its vicious, rampant, and xenophobic campaign of China-bashing.
For the first time in history, from Detroit to Houston and New York to LA, using China as a scapegoat for every U.S. economic problem became a popular bipartisan sport in congressional the mud-wrestling.
China-bashing TV advertisements have showcased gongs, dragons, cheesy music, red communist flags, a flood of invading merchandise and insatiable Chinese consumers. Some of the ads have clearly touched on the sensitive battle line of race, casting a profound shadow over the lives of millions of Chinese Americans.
What’s so alarming is that anti-China feeling in the U.S. appears to be a broad-based and long-lasting trend. If this dangerous trend isn’t dealt with properly, it could be an explosive issue in future Sino-U.S. relations.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
Elections Can’t Cure America’s ‘Disease’: The Beijing Times, People’s Republic of China
So what’s the view of Beijing to the recent 2010 midterms? Not only do the U.S. elections appear unlikely to encourage China to set aside dictatorship for pluralism, according to this article by Mao Yingying for China’s state-run Beijing Times, America itself would be better off reconsidering how its ’so-called democracy’ should run.
For the Beijing Times, Mao Yingying writes in part:
Americans appear disappointed with more than Obama, for despite the bad report card for Obama and the Democratic Party and Republican success at harnessing the “anger vote,” Republicans don’t seem to know or want to know how to resolve America’s great problems, like how to reduce the ever-increasing unemployment rate. In the words of a certain Republican leader [Mitch McConnell], the most important task for his party in the next two years is to “ensure Mr. Obama is a one-term president.”
Defeating Obama and the Democratic Party may be a victory for Republicans, but one party’s victory over another has precious little meaning to ordinary American people. Long and intense disputes over trivial matters between the two parties will deliver none of the things that people want. On the contrary, when the change in power is reduced to two election machines attacking one another, so-called democracy becomes a farce – and one that demands the spending of a lot of dollars.
American scholars have pointed out that “replacing a few chess pieces on the board” (after the midterm elections) will bring very little change to the United States. In fact, “replacing the most important piece on the board” (presidential election) is unlikely to bring much change, either. Because the rules of the game haven’t changed, i.e.: “whoever Wall Street money flows toward, wins” and “behind the verbal wars are a mountain of advertising and packaging fees.” Lying to the people and writing “blank checks,” dumping dirty water over opponents, and finding “scapegoats” and “punching bags” in the international community haven’t changed either. Under such rules, the elections were quite lively, but the “show,” rather than reflecting reality, shows that the American disease continues to spread.
The reality is that amidst an economic and financial crisis, the U.S. doesn’t have a superior or credible political system for improving the economy or people’s livelihoods. Expecting America’s self-styled democracy to reform itself to overcome its economic difficulties can only be called a fantasy.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
The People’s Firewall: Republican-Controlled Governorships and State Legislatures
The progressive Obama agenda has become so toxic, even at the state level, Reuters reports that the people not only flipped the DC House, but also their governorships, state houses, and entire legislatures.
This is important for two reasons: redistricting and the ability to flex state’s rights against the Obama administration, which, as we know, has no problem suing states. From Reuters:
In most states, legislatures will be redrawing electoral districts for the U.S. House — an adjustment of boundaries every 10 years that tends to favor the party in charge in each state.
The big Republican Party wins at the state level give it the edge in reinforcing its strength in the U.S. House.
Republicans took control of at least 18 state chambers from Democrats, according to Tim Storey, an elections analyst at the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.
A firewall indeed. There were significant gains by the Republicans as summarized over at RedState that bear repeating:
The whole of the Maine legislator has flipped to the GOP. Several people I have talked to said such a deep and thorough shift to any one party has not happened in one election in the past 100 years.
[snip]
GOP has moved to the right. More so, the Republicans picking up, in the worst case, seven seats is historically strong.
[snip]
There will be 18 states subject to reapportionment. The Republicans will control a majority of those — at least ten and maybe a dozen or more. More significantly, a minimum of seventeen state legislative houses have flipped to the Republican Party.
The North Carolina Legislature is Republican for the first time since 1870. Yes, that is Eighteen Seventy.
The Alabama Legislature is Republican for the first time since 1876.
For those saying this is nothing because it is the South, consider these:
The entire Wisconsin and New Hampshire legislatures have flipped to the GOP by wide margins.
The State Houses in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Montana, and Colorado flipped to the GOP.
The Maine and Minnesota Senates flipped to the GOP.
The Texas and Tennessee Houses went from virtually tied to massive Republican gains. The gains in Texas were so big that the Republicans no longer need the Democrats to get state constitutional amendments out of the state legislature.
The American people know Obama is a bully when it comes to passing legislation and overstepping federal authority. He says the American people are “enemies” and we should be punished. However, the only punishment handed out on election day was to the Democrats and by ushering in the Republicans at the state level, they have given them the power to push back against the federal government-and expect it.
Morning Bell: Returning the People’s House to the People
“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Unfortunately over the past several decades, leadership from both parties have concentrated more and more power into a select few leadership positions. This trend reached its zenith under Speaker Pelosi who routinely: 1) bypassed committees entirely by writing major legislation in the Speaker’s office or via the Rules Committee; 2) created and funded parallel quasi-committees (e.g. the “Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming”) to outflank dissenting committee chairs; and 3) prevented opponents from offering their own proposals or amendments on the House floor.
To help prevent these practices from continuing, The Heritage Foundation
The 112th Congress will not be sworn-in until January 2011. However, just weeks after the November 2 elections, each party will meet to create their steering committees, which then allocate positions of authority to govern the full body. If the American people send a strong message for change next week, both parties should strongly consider adopting the reforms above to show they have listened.
Quick Hits:
- Betting that the Federal Reserve will
- The TARP inspector general accused the Obama Treasury Department of
- In a radio interview that aired on Univision on Monday,
- Iran began loading fuel into the core of its first
- Director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis Bill Beach
The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.
West ‘Inhibits Political Diversity’ Among Nations: Global Times, People’s Republic of China
Apparently bewildered by global applause at the decision to award imprisoned democracy dissident Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize, this very defensive editorial from China’s state-controlled Global Times argues that the United States and the West ‘prohibits political diversity among countries.’ Later, in apparent defense of its own authoritarianism, it continues, ‘in some situations, the West supports authoritarian governments based on pure self interest.’
The editorial from China’s Global Times starts out this way:
For the West, the sum of $ 1.4 million is a fairly modest for sparking an ideological war with China, which is what it did by awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo.
It was bound to happen. If Liu weren’t selected, it would have been someone else from China on the shortlist, which included Rebiya Kadeer [a Uyghur activist in exile in the U.S.], Hu Jia [activist on AIDS, land rights and democracy] and Wei Jingshen [legendary democracy activist and former Red Guard in U.S. exile].
The West will continue to target China in its ideological war. It seems that the Western way has to be the only way, and people around the globe must adopt Western attitudes. In the minds of some Westerners, even if China grows and develops into a highly advanced nation, it will still need to surrender to Western ideology.
The democracy that the West tries to export advocates freedom of choice. But why is it that while the West avidly heralds individual freedom, it prohibits political diversity among countries?
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
Nobel Peace Prize is Biased Toward the West: Global Times, People’s Republic of China
Does the West, through the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, unfairly single out China for criticism? According to this editorial from China’s strictly state-run Global Times, awarding Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo with the Peace Prize was a ‘display of arrogance and prejudice against a country that has made the most remarkable economic and social progress.’ Once again, the current Chinese government seems to regard economic prowess as a pass for not providing the political freedoms enshrined in its own constitution.
The somewhat restrained government-approved editorial starts out this way:
Friday the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, an incarcerated Chinese criminal.
The Nobel committee once again displayed its arrogance and prejudice against a country that has made the most remarkable economic and social progress in the past three decades.
The Nobel Prize has been generally perceived as a prestigious award in China, but many Chinese feel the Peace Prize is loaded with Western ideology.
Last century, the prize was awarded several times to pro-Western advocates in the former Soviet Union, including Mikhail Gorbachev, whose efforts directly led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The Western preference of the Nobel committee didn’t disappear with the end of the Cold War.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
More Poor in America than China? Think Again!: Global Times, People’s Republic of China
It’s the battle of the titans – but one that neither side wants to win. Who has more poor people: the United States or China? And who’s poor are worse off? For the state-controlled Global Times, columnist Chiang Meng writes that despite recent statistics from the Chinese themselves, China’s poor are more numerous and far worse off than their American counterparts.
For the Global Times, Chiang Meng writes in part:
On September 16, the U.S. Census Bureau released a report showing that in 2008, the number of Americans living below the poverty line was 39,800,000, accounting for 13.2 percent of the total population. By 2009, the number had risen to 43,600,000, or 14.3 percent of the total population. This shows that one out of seven Americans is poor. On July 17th, at a special Party conference here on combating poverty, declared that China’s impoverished rural population dropped from 250,000,000 in 1978 to 3,597,000 in 2009 – and that by 2020, poverty will essentially have been eradicated.
This news seems to convey the following: China has fewer poor people than America does. America’s destitute are increasing while China’s impoverished are continually decreasing. It seems as if we really are “surpassing England and overtaking America.” Could this be true?
There must be a standard for measuring poverty. To be considered below the poverty line in America, the annual income of a family of four must be under $ 21,954, and for an individual below $ 10,956. In 2008, China’s impoverished consisted of people making less than 785 yuan a year. Please pay attention: with current exchange rates, one U.S. dollar is equal to 6.72 yuan. That means $ 21,954 can be exchanged for more than 140,000 yuan. In other words, America’s destitute make 180 times more than impoverished Chinese! And this is after taking account of the recent appreciation of yuan. Two years ago, the disparity was even greater.
Here is the difference between poor Americans and Chinese: their living standards are by no means being measured by the same rules. People in Beijing or Shanghai making 2,000 or 3,000 yuan a month run around struggling like ants, never being able to afford a home. Even their lives aren’t as comfortable as America’s poor. So what’s the reasoning behind the argument, “There are less poor Chinese than poor Americans?” It could be just ignorant boastfulness or perhaps just ill intent.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
Fun new Iraqi TV prank show: Planting fake bombs in people’s cars at security checkpoints
What could go wrong?
Alternate headline: “Iraqis invent greatest show in history of television.” The show “Put Him in [Camp] Bucca” has drawn numerous protests but has stayed on air throughout the fasting month, broadcasting its “stings” on well-known Iraqi personalities. All of them were ensnared by being invited to the headquarters of the private television station Al Baghdadia […]
