60 Comments
Aug 3, 2022Liked by Quoth the Raven

Experiencing the pain of not getting supplies for our business. (truck parts)

My theory is they are holding back manufacturing until interest rates here bite the consumer and then they simply raise prices on ordinary items sold a big retailers, because they can. Kind of like the fentanyl problem we have and they don't. Its a soft war we are losing and don't know we are fighting.

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Aug 3, 2022Liked by Quoth the Raven

Spot on, and Pelosi’s vainglorious trip to Taiwan is just another poke in China’s eye - spurring on Xi while we manufacture pronouns.

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China is already backing down from their crazy rhetoric and so on 😂 Pelosi Stares Down Xi’s Threats, Giving China a Reality Check https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-03/pelosi-stares-down-xi-s-threats-giving-china-a-reality-check

McConnell and Republicans praised her for not giving into China’s threats and showing strength instead of weakness (especially you know, after many Republican senators visited Taiwan back in Mar-Apr 2021 and China tried to bully them to not visit). But you do you and keep being partisan 👍.

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Aug 3, 2022·edited Aug 3, 2022

“China is already backing down” - missing the bigger picture, aren’t we? JFC

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President Bush was the first President to say we will defend Taiwan if China attacked them. His language was powerful and resolute. He had balls buddy and he set a new US foreign policy. It’s called peace through STRENGTH. You obviously don’t understand how important Taiwan is to our national security and why we have such a strong US foreign policy regarding Taiwan that, you know, Republicans pushed.

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You and I agree on Taiwan’s importance; but do you really think our leadership and military could take on PRC successfully in a hot war? More importantly, is our leadership capable of winning the ECONOMIC and technological cold warfare being waged upon us? This parade of pols visiting Taiwan is meaningless pageantry.

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I was stationed in South Korea, traveled a lot throughout Asia especially China, and studied international relations and lived in DC for ~8 years. It'll take some time to explain US foreign policy regarding Asia, especially the importance of Taiwan, but no, China cannot risk conflict with the US and Asia respects power in addition the US has invested way too much into Asia (Japan, South Korea, etc.) to risk allowing China to change the power dynamics and status quo by trying to intimidate and hint at taking Taiwan by force. China has statistically been more aggressive with military movements and airspace flights, they are the ones actually provoking if you look at MILITARY aggressiveness. Pelosi visiting is similar to what President Bush did and what President Nixon also did regarding defending Kinmen (the island that might turn out to be Taiwan's Crimea is what I'm thinking could happen here).

Also, they and everyone (especially Asia countries) are too dependent on trade and China just isn't strong enough to fight. Australia and many of our major non-NATO allies do not like China either. Btw, our military is far superior than people think (I just loved when right wingers promoted Russia's military commercials showing strong masculinity and turns out their military is a joke) and we have been pushing Taiwan to increase their defense and spend MORE on defense because we are warning Taiwan that China is looking to use force in the future.

Deterrence is effective, especially if you are the world's #1 superpower. If Biden pulled a President Bush over Ukraine what Bush did for Taiwan, Russia would not dare invade knowing the US would come to Ukraine's defense militarily. Weakness invites threats to materialize. But if you think the US is provoking here, it's the media feeding you bs, China has been provoking Taiwan for a very long time and have gotten even MORE aggressive the past 2 years.

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China doesn't need force. Xiden already said, and Kirby confirmed, that the US wi NOT defend Taiwan, and that we recognize the One China policy. So it's already done.

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Jeff, I hope you are correct about our relative strengths. I also know Asia. The US faces serious challenges worldwide and domestically, and we just do not seem to have the leadership to address them successfully for the long term. PRC seems to play the long game much better. Peace and good luck to us all.

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Backing down?! Xiden backed down when he said the US is not going to protect Taiwan. THAT'S when China cooled it's rhetoric! Kirby went and reiterated Xiden's "one China" policy, lest anyone think the demented Resident misspoke. He is owned and installed by China, now so are we.

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US has always respected the One China policy, lol it's been our US foreign policy forever from Rep to Dem admins. However we have initiated and designated Taiwan and key major non-NATO ally, ALLY under Republican admin. Read into the history and your partisanship is again showing with "Xiden" LMAO. Biden wasn't the one who pulled the USA out of the TTP https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2021/10/04/trumps-exit-from-asian-trade-pact-damaged-america-boosted-china/?sh=754bee585e80

You know if other countries trade even more with China, they form stronger relations, China can influence them more and away from the US. The US became a world superpower because while the empires all fought each other, we traded with the world and build our economic superiority. Trade is key and Trump pulled us out of the TPP was one of the worst moves possible and gave China more power and influence in the Asia region (which is NOT what the US wants). China replaced the US as the key trading partner in the TPP. It was a gift to China, but you guys go on about "pronouns" and immaterial things that don't matter when it comes to foreign policy and strength.

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LOL you see those clowns change our policy over the last few days to stand down and tell China we aren't interested, Taiwan is a theirs? Then the immediate downshifting from China? That was a policy shift for the US. The mystery is over, we will not defend Taiwan, that's new.

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We will defend Taiwan and that's why Pelosi and all these Republicans as well have increased their visits to Taiwan. These are members of the US government, elected officials visiting and recognizing Taiwan as a major ally.

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Aug 3, 2022·edited Aug 3, 2022

Thanks QTR. I am living in Thailand since 1985. Thailand is very much controlled by Chinese. They worship money and the power achieved by that. There is nothing they will not do to win the money game. They are ruthless. They don't honor contracts. They don't honor intellectual property. They are mostly atheists, which is something Christians who feel some relationship with the creator can't understand.

Whatever they are doing, they are not going to show their hands.

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Aug 3, 2022Liked by Quoth the Raven

As I commented on one of your related articles just yesterday, there are a large number of possible actions that the Chinese government can take which will be certain to cause additional damage to our economy.

The very narrow framing that, "they didn't shoot Pelosi out of the sky means we won" from so many is just nonsensical. The reaction from China will be ongoing and they apparently intend for punitive actions against us.

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Aug 3, 2022Liked by Quoth the Raven

Good assessment...that said, I have to ask. Is China just mostly a country of 'pro-maskers'? I can find accounts of people who think the strict measures are better in the long run. Here at home, I can tell when someone is visiting from up north because they are wearing masks and looking bug eyed at everyone else in the Food Lion who isn't. This could be manipulation; it could be appeasement of the majority that favors strict measures and control, in a communist controlled country. Despite the attempt to make a 'dollar free zone', I also wonder if China really wants to break the grapple with Western economies by pushing the US/West to greatly decrease their own manufacturing and supply reliance on China. I know the theory about the goods/services and US Treasuries revolving wheel, but there is a lot less gold in Africa and Russia than in the G7 (and they may be playing for more control in leverage without completely breaking the hold). Sorry, no good answer here, just more questions.

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They and Asia are pro-maskers because of SARS, can you guys stop with these weird conspiracies or theories of manipulation? SARS was a pretty deadly and scary coronavirus, let’s hope that it doesn’t come back. But it scared most of Asia and that’s why masking has become a “cultural” thing now from HK, China, to Japan, etc.

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I think you’re getting at an important point a lot of conservative Americans have a hard time processing. Chinese people have a cultural bias towards the collective. They hear that if they use a hands off approach like the U.S. and get our results, they’ll have 4 million dead and millions more dealing with long covid heart issues that will affect their ability to work. With that info, a more collective society might estimate that lock downs suck but maybe make sense, especially if their medical system isn’t up to par for that kind of load.

It’s our uniquely individualistic and self-focused culture in the U.S. that makes us unable to process why we had a leading death rate among wealthy nations and connect it to our collective refusal to take basic countermeasures like mandatory masking outside the home and canceling large public gatherings. We had a lot of unnecessary deaths by being unwilling to mask and isolate. This is where conservatives that railed against the counter measures run into their blinders. I doubt we’ll ever have an honest social conversation about what our decisions cost. Because that leads right to the conversation about what the value of life is and almost everyone I know that was against masks and lockdowns doesn’t want to talk about the costs of their decision not to isolate or mask. They want to approach the convo with notions of personal liberty, usually completely avoiding the core foundation of personal liberties which is not allowing your personal decisions to affect others’ lives. Which, if people were running around not taking any counter measures against Covid in public spaces, they most certainly were doing. After all, it’s always more fun to talk about what you’re owed than what you owe as it pertains to the country you live in.

The good, ok not-good, news is that getting to a working figure of what our collective decisions cost us is pretty easy because we have equivalent populations all over the world that took different paths. I read different numbers from the medical sources but it’s pretty easy to look at other wealthy country’s per capita death rates that had stronger counter measures and gather that roughly 25%-%50 of our deaths were preventable. Super rough figure, I know. So a ballpark 300,000-400,000 unnecessary deaths is probably fair, when this is all over. Given that that is pretty close to our WW2 loses of soldiers, it’s a sad statement on our society’s true calculations. Kind of gives away what we care about: If other people are going to die for my inconvenience, so be it. As long as my personal risk is low, damn the torpedos and the collective risk. We gotta keep the economy rolling, not that we succeeded on that last measure.

Knowing those things, I’m not surprised at all that China is still locking down. When/if covid death rates hit true flu equivalents, I expect they’ll relax. Although I still share Chris’ suspicions about the Chinese knowing more about the long term effects of the virus. Sadly, if this was a manufactured virus, the odds of us ever seeing evidence of that is about the same as us seeing evidence that Epstein was murdered. Apart from the obvious of course.

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Well said, I was raised in a conservative Republican family and to see how further right the right have gone is crazy. Now I’m left when I still believe in limited govt, equal opportunity, modern capitalism vs unfettered capitalism, etc.

The big problem is Americans are so selfish and all about individualism, we forgot that society is about a collective people working together to help one another. Asian culture is about harmony, respect and taking care of our seniors, etc. Asia isn’t perfect but they do have societal culture, America I feel has lost a lot of that societal culture as we become ever more divided left vs right and increasingly selfish.

Instead of criticizing China for bullying our politicians , if the politicians happen to be left ones we criticize them instead of China . But when red politicians visit Taiwan and don’t cave to China’s bullying, they are strong. But when a blue politician stands up and doesn’t cave to China’s bullying they are provoking China and if they do cave, they are weak to China and can’t lead the country.

We have allowed politics and partisanship govern our government and impact our laws to how we scientifically fight Covid. Screw politics and partisanship, we need to get back to the America we once were and it was about working together to make her, the USA 🇺🇸 , stronger together.

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I agree with some of your points....but there is a lot of conflation with the data over covid masking, cancellations, etc. At the start, it seemed prudent to have measures to ensure medical services weren't overwhelmed. That made sense. After that initial period, I'd suggest the data, at least in North Carolina, is not as clear as you make it out to be. Where is the concern for the fact that it took so long for a unified, comprehensive treatment approach to become standard? I'd suggest that we should have greater scorn for the fact that a positive test meant that treatment consisted of 'go home and wait there for 14-21 days unless you are having trouble breathing/living. In that case, go to the hospital'. Collectivist approaches can be a placebo in collectivist societies; it doesn't mean the collective action is inherently better or worse(yes, I know someone will throw Japanese stats at me). As far as the economy....we the US (North Carolina) locked down and it clearly nosedived the economy. I'd suggest we are recovering better because we did not lock down as severely as other states / nations and we are relatively open now. I haven't touched on the statistically questionable push for teenagers and younger to get vaccinated, but that is a sore spot as well (where the emphasis is not born out by the stats with respect to cases, hospitilaztion, and death). So China can mask up and go nuts with restrictive measures because they treat covid like hyper transferable Ebola; that doesn't mean it's a better course of action, but it is understandable as a cultural phenomenon.

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Aug 3, 2022·edited Aug 3, 2022

What do you mean….. “you guys”?

(Otherwise, the history and cultural norms are part of why I posted my comment. That said, the eastern Pacific Rim does also have a history of not being unilateral in all political and cultural aspects, so it’s worth poking the idea with a stick - which is what Irons is doing with his essay. Edit - saw you posted some more in another reply)

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Doesn’t sound like a conspiracy theory. The results of China’s lockdowns harm the western countries that decided to give China massive power over their lives. Then add the West committing suicide with green hysteria and proxy wars…….And …And……and…….we are so stupid!!!!!

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Yes stupid and extremely lazy. If you go to China and India you see how people have to really work to survive. No food stamps, welfare checks, rent subsidies, etc. Work or die.

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China manufactures something like 90% of the inputs for US antibiotics.

They would hardly have to fire a shot.

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Yes, and as the bio weapons get released these will be harder to obtain (abx) and so more and more mortality will occur. Our healthcare was completely messed up by Obomination Care, then we get Con-vid scam, and now - people lots of people - either getting rare cancers or dropping dead, or having strange neuro problems..j.. and no staff willing to be jabbed up to care for people..so no health care workers . yup. Give that a bit of time to brew, and in a few years, our turkey will be cooked...

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"I can’t believe it’s not a product of Democrats here in the U.S."

US democrats are just communist disciples who haven't graduated yet

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The CCP lies about everything as a matter of policy. That we can be sure of.

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Thank you for your writing. Finally someone brave enough to write what we are thinking.

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I agree 100%. From the first time China re-locked down, I said this was deliberate to inflict pain on the west. There was no other explanation. What, Chinese scientists are dumber than all other scientists? China goods = Russian oil. China knows we don't manufacture anything here anymore just as Russia knows Europe doesn't have the oil needed to run their economy. Funny how they hold all the cards because we so willingly surrendered ours. Better buy your Christmas gifts now for December 2022-2033.

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Well they know the US population is too lazy and entitled to actually go back into manufacturing - so they can strangle the supply chain until we beg them to start producing again (similar to Joey in the middle east begging for oil).

China knows they have 2.5 years to get whatever accomplished before the administration changes here, so i would suspect things will get worse before they get better.

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Manufacturing is heavily dependent on labor inputs, now with robotics technologies and eventually 3D printing, cheap labor will no longer be an advantage. Globalization is why we had decades of deflation and China was exporting deflation, now, we have inflation and China is not longer exporting much deflation to help here given the supply and rising cost of labor as their economy grows.

But you go ahead and blanket statement regarding US being lazy when we’ve been the center of innovation and startups due to how we embrace capitalism (which the Chinese copied). The fact is, most US citizens won’t do the heavy labor work that we import immigrants to do, like picking vegetables and so on. So yea, US are lazy there because they don’t work as hard as immigrants for lower wages to pick fruits and vegetables.

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Aug 3, 2022·edited Aug 12, 2022

No one in the USA really wants to work. The USA is full of fat, lazy, dumbed down people. How many of them when know what is the meaning of July 4th?

Of course not everyone is lazy. And of course there are lots of very smart people in the USA too.

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China & New Zealand are in a neck & neck race to see who has the bigger idiots in charge.

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The winner is New Zealand!

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Maybe stop talking about a ‘virus’. It’s simply not a thing. To think, grown adults, whole societies believing in fairy tales.

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Viruses are a made up concept. They have never been proven to exist. It's exocytosis and endocytosis. The body detoxifies. It's how we stay healthy. Too many toxins causes overload and then a person becomes more seriously ill with more extreme symptoms. The common cold has always been around and will never go away, so they can justify their lockdowns indefinitely.

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Who is behind the scenes, manipulating East and West? China owns lots of US land and even owns some of the grand old estates in England - so they say. Ant then there is Canada where China is rumored to own a lot,

It seems to me that there is a power we do not know about, a secret power who has decided to fuin our lives and our planet. WHO are they?

Maurice Strong died in Beijing just about three years ago. I have read that his cousin, Ann Louise, was a very important inf;uence on Mao Tse Tung. She also had to do with Stalin taking all the food from the Kulaks of the Ukraine so that between 7 and 12 million people died of starvation in the winter of 1933 - 34 according to Solzenytsin. Stalin sent a man called Kaganovich to supervise that monstrous theft.

It is a man called Kagan and his wife Victoria Nuland who started the destabilising of the Ukraine.

All so strange and interesting.

And - is this present conflict in the Ukraine just the old conflict between Russia and the Mongols - who settled between the Caspian and Black Seas, took Slav women, decided to be Jews, in the 17th, Century I think. (Read The Thirteenth Tribe. )

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