RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/05/03/chinas-moral-disfigurement/#slide-1

The Communist Party has attacked, but not destroyed, the nation’s traditional ethics

In 2001 Gordon G. Chang, an American lawyer who worked many years in China, published a book called “The Coming Collapse of China.” The corruption and hypocrisy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would be its undoing, Chang argued. A spirited controversy among China-watchers ensued. Nonsense — Chang is dreaming, said CCP defenders. No, it’s you apologists who are dreaming, replied CCP critics. As years ticked by with the regime still in the saddle, the apologists grew smug: We told you so.

I asked the opinion of Liu Binyan, the doyen of Chinese investigative journalists, who was widely revered in the 1980s as “China’s conscience” but was living in forced exile when Chang’s book appeared. “The title of the book is misleading,” said Liu. “Coming collapse? Morally speaking, China has already collapsed.” Liu explained his comment: After the massacre of protesters in 1989 and the CCP elite’s raid on the Chinese economy, during which a few high-ranking officials in the 1990s lopped off great chunks of it — electricity, IT, banking, shipping — and placed these in the hands of their own families, who profited spectacularly, cynicism had overtaken the country. Moral language of any kind was now a shell game; all that mattered was winning. The attitude of the elite seeped down through the whole of society. Liu told me about a new term that had arisen: zaishou, literally “slaughter the familiar,” which meant that, after swindling strangers had become commonplace, people were now going a step further. In zaishou one “slaughtered” friends and family; loyalty and trust were low-hanging fruit, there to be gutted for personal advantage. 

Illustrative stories are many. Here is one, reported in 2007 in Beijing Youth Daily: A wealthy businessman was keeping a mistress when his wife discovered the fact. She was irate but did not ask for divorce. Instead she demanded that her husband hand the woman over for a personal beating by her. The husband negotiated with his wife over how long the beating must last. Then, wishing to spare his mistress, he went to the Internet and placed a notice on a popular jobs forum: “Wanted: woman to receive beating by another woman. Should be about 35 years old.” He offered pay of 300 yuan (around $40) per minute. He got ten applicants and chose one, and the beating proceeded. The wife, albeit deceived, was satisfied. 

In citing this bizarre story I do not claim that it represents a pattern, because it likely does not. I merely want to illustrate the sort of thing that can happen in a society as ethically unmoored as China’s has become. The novelist Yu Hua has quipped that one advantage of writing about Chinese society today is that it is so vast and so adrift that one can imagine just about anything and still feel confident that it has probably happened somewhere. 

https://www.jns.org/opinion/anti-semitism-is-a-form-of-delirium-especially-in-france

The latest shocking development in the scandal over a horrific antisemitic murder in France not only trains a harsh light on that country’s attitude to Jew-hatred. It also illuminates a deeply problematic and wider inability to deal with antisemitism in the west.

In 2017, a 65-year-old Jewish retired doctor and schoolteacher, Sarah Halimi, was murdered in a frenzied antisemitic attack in her Paris apartment.

Her next-door neighbor, Kobili Traoré, a 27-year-old Muslim man of Malian descent, beat her and threw her out of her third-floor window to cries of Allahu akbar, or “God is great,” and calling her a shaitan, or “satan”.

He had previously harassed Halimi’s daughter by calling her a “filthy Jew”. According to one psychiatric report, Traoré had been troubled by Jewish religious artefacts in Halimi’s apartment — her mezuzah and menorah, which “amplified the frantic outburst of hate”.

Last week, France’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, upheld an appeal court ruling that had rejected putting Traoré on trial. This was because, at the time of the murder, he had been high on cannabis causing an episode of “acute mental delirium”.

Under French law, said the Court of Cassation, “a person is not criminally responsible if suffering, at the time of the event, from psychic or neuro-psychic disturbance that has eliminated all discernment or control” over that person’s actions.

The ruling defies comprehension. Many murders and other serious crimes are committed by people under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Yet no-one argues they are therefore not to be held responsible for their actions. As Francis Szpiner, one of the Halimi family’s lawyers, asked in outrage: “Will this also apply to drunk drivers who kill children on the road?”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/islamic-state-executes-another-christian-video-raymond-ibrahim/

In a video released last Saturday, April 17, Muslims connected to the Islamic State executed a Coptic Christian man in Sinai, Egypt.

The slain was identified as 62-year-old Nabil Habashi Salama.  In the video, Salama appears on his knees, with three masked men holding rifles stand behind him.  The one in the middle launches into a typical jihadi diatribe:

“All praise to Allah, who ordered his slaves [Muslims] to fight and who assigned humiliation onto the infidels” — this latter part is said while the terrorist contemptuously points at the bound and kneeling man before him — “until they pay the jizya while feeling utterly subdued.”

The middle speaker continues by threatening “all the crusaders of the world” — a reference to Christians in the West — while singling out the countrymen of the one about to be slain: “as for you Christians of Egypt, this is the price of your support for the Egyptian army.”

The speaker then points his rifle at the back of the Christian’s head — even as chants of “jihad! jihad! jihad!” blare out — and fires at point-blank range, killing him.

It is unclear when the video was made — Salama was abducted over five months earlier — and the timing of its release appears to have been meant to coincide with Easter, which for Copts and other Orthodox communities is just beginning.  (As discussed here, Muslim terrorists have a penchant for killing and terrorizing Christians and bombing their churches during their holiest days, especially Easter, most recently in Indonesia.)

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17303/us-eu-help-to-suppress-journalists-political

The malware, disguised as chat applications, would give the Palestinian Security Services access to targets’ phones, including contacts, text messages, locations and even keystrokes, Facebook said. The hacking operation targeted Palestinian journalists, political activists and dissidents.

The Facebook revelation came two weeks after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the Biden administration decided to resume financial aid to the Palestinians, including “vital security assistance programs,” a reference to support for the PA security forces.

US taxpayer money, in other words, is going to support a Palestinian security service whose main task is to spy on journalists, political activists and critics of Abbas and the Palestinian leadership. The same, of course, applies to European taxpayer money.

This is certainly not a way to advance prosperity, security, and freedom for Palestinians. On the contrary; by funding the Palestinian security forces, the Biden administration is actually assisting Abbas in his continuous efforts to silence his critics and intimidate journalists and human rights and political activists.

By spying on journalists and political opponents, the Palestinian security forces have violated Article 4 of their own law…..

In the past decade, the PA security forces have arrested or interrogated dozens of Palestinians over critical remarks they posted on Facebook. This crackdown has been largely ignored by the international community, specifically US and European Union donors to the PA…. This indifference has allowed the Palestinian leadership to enforce an atmosphere of menacing intimidation on the Palestinians living under its rule in the West Bank.

Now that Facebook has confirmed the PA’s responsibility for hacking the accounts of journalists and political activists, the Biden administration and Western donors are morally obligated to emend their policy of providing financial aid to Abbas’s security services.

The donors must make it clear to the Palestinian leadership that the PA security forces are tasked with enforcing law and order and combating terrorism, not misappropriating American and European money to crush their own people.

The time has come to answer the basic question: Why are Americans and Europeans propping up an authoritarian regime, to the tune of millions upon millions per year, that muzzles free speech and spies on reporters and political opponents?

Palestinians have long been accusing the Palestinian Authority (PA) of spying on them by monitoring their activities on various social media platforms, including Facebook. The espionage has resulted in the arrest and persecution of dozens of Palestinians, especially those who dared to criticize PA President Mahmoud Abbas and senior Palestinian officials.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/hong-kong-national-security-

For a place that has been stripped of its democratic rights during a pandemic, Hong Kong still has days that feel routine.

Finance workers gather for happy-hour beers. Hipsters ­photograph latte art in tiny cafes designed for Instagram. Masked commuters pack the subway at rush hour, and on weekends, trails are jammed with hikers scrambling up hills to catch the sunset.

April 15, however, was not a normal Thursday. That occasion, the first “National Security Education Day” since China imposed a tough security law in June, was the most visible display of Hong Kong’s fall from a relatively free, boisterous territory to an ­Orwellian place that resembles the repressive mainland.

The propaganda scenes were a contrast to 2019, when reporters documented Hong Kong’s largest revolt against Chinese rule since the 1997 handover by Britain. ­Directed at children and ­designed to rehabilitate the ­image of the Hong Kong Police Force, last week’s campaign showed how the authorities are enforcing a single narrative of the protests — meddlesome foreign forces stirring up trouble — and how no expense will be spared to fully integrate the ­financial ­center into China’s ­authoritarian system.

http://www.settimananews.it/informazione-internazionale/usa-china-the-path-of-no-ret

The two countries have differences over ideology, culture, civilization, trade, currency management, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and human rights. There is rivalry for global primacy. There are ongoing fights in cyberspace and space; there is major competition over technology and the Belt and Road Initiative.

There are conflicting claims and deep tussles in many geopolitical areas: Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Senkaku, the Indian border, North Korea, and the dealing and future of Myanmar, Iran, and Russia. There are growing fissures over the future role of the digital yuan against that of the dollar.

There are just too many tensions, and it seems likely that these tensions cannot be solved and will be blown out of proportion. Moreover, the global tectonic shifts which are being brought about by Covid and its consequences are further fueling those tensions.

The vaccines are creating an area for diplomatic and political tensions, and the stimulus packages further enhance divergences.

Financial boost

Europe, the United States, and Japan need and want a stimulus package to boost the economy out of the present slump. It will possibly be the largest financial aid package in global history. Thousands of trillions will be poured into the economy to reshape the wealth system and world trade. The measures will bring inflation, and there are already signs in the United States that higher prices are kicking in.

China conversely doesn’t need a stimulus package. It posted 18.3% growth in the first quarter of the year, and a large plan for infrastructure is already taking place. Moreover, global demand for Chinese industrial products has been driving growth in China in recent months.

Further, an injection of money could force China to import inflation with price hikes in commodities, oil, and ore, and thus impose share price increases on the Chinese middle class with unfathomable consequences. Any of these challenges could be handled by themselves, but in combination, they make a huge question mark.

No status quo ante

http://China’s Fishing Fleet, the World’s Largest, Drives Beijing’s Global Ambitions Governments and conservation groups accuse the ships of fishing illegally and advancing military goals

In Beijing’s push to become a maritime superpower, China’s fishing fleet has grown to become the world’s largest by far—and it has turned more aggressive, provoking tensions around the globe.

The fleet brings in millions of tons of seafood a year to feed the country’s booming middle class. Foreign governments, fishermen and conservation groups have accused the fleet of illegal fishing, including by using banned equipment and venturing into other countries’ territory. That fishing has upended local economies and threatens ecosystems including around the Galápagos Islands, affected governments and fishermen say.

The Chinese fleet is helping the country stake out a bigger presence at sea, including by building a world-wide network of ports. The vessels, rigged with winches and booms and pulling giant nets, can be twice as large as a naval patrol boat, at an average of almost 200 feet long. Fishing crews have helped establish island settlements in waters subject to territorial disputes with neighbors.

An analysis of transponder and global vessel registration data indicates Chinese boats involved in distant-water operations—meaning outside a country’s own territorial waters—total as many as 17,000, according to London-based researcher Overseas Development Institute. Official data and analyst estimates indicate China’s closest competitors in the industry, Taiwan and South Korea, have some 2,500 such vessels combined.

China’s foreign ministry said that legally registered vessels were far lower, at 2,701 as of 2019. China agreed to cap its fishing vessels at 3,000 in 2017, in response to World Trade Organization efforts to cut government subsidies that contribute to overfishing.

The ministry said that Beijing implements the world’s strictest oversight on distant-water fishing. It has toughened legal penalties on errant fishing in recent years.