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TechnoratiThe Olympics: Unveiling Police State 2.0
So far, the Olympics have been an open invitation to China-bash, a bottomless excuse for Western journalists to go after the Commies on everything from internet censorship to Darfur. Through all the nasty news stories, however, the Chinese government has seemed amazingly unperturbed. That's because it is betting on this: when the opening ceremonies begin friday, you will instantly forget all that unpleasantness as your brain is zapped by the cultural/athletic/political extravaganza that is the Beijing Olympics.
Like it or not, you are about to be awed by China's sheer awesomeness.
The games have been billed as China's "coming out party" to the world. They are far more significant than that. These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organizing society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism -- central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance -- harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Some call it "authoritarian capitalism," others "market Stalinism," personally I prefer "McCommunism."
The Beijing Olympics are themselves the perfect expression of this hybrid system. Through extraordinary feats of authoritarian governing, the Chinese state has built stunning new stadiums, highways and railways -- all in record time. It has razed whole neighborhoods, lined the streets with trees and flowers and, thanks to an "anti-spitting" campaign, cleaned the sidewalks of saliva. The Communist Party of China even tried to turn the muddy skies blue by ordering heavy industry to cease production for a month -- a sort of government-mandated general strike.
As for those Chinese citizens who might go off-message during the games -- Tibetan activists, human right campaigners, malcontent bloggers -- hundreds have been thrown in jail in recent months. Anyone still harboring protest plans will no doubt be caught on one of Beijing's 300,000 surveillance cameras and promptly nabbed by a security officer; there are reportedly 100,000 of them on Olympics duty.
The goal of all this central planning and spying is not to celebrate the glories of Communism, regardless of what China's governing party calls itself. It is to create the ultimate consumer cocoon for Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cell phones, McDonald's happy meals, Tsingtao beer, and UPS delivery -- to name just a few of the official Olympic sponsors. But the hottest new market of all is the surveillance itself. Unlike the police states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, China has built a Police State 2.0, an entirely for-profit affair that is the latest frontier for the global Disaster Capitalism Complex.
Chinese corporations financed by U.S. hedge funds, as well as some of American's most powerful corporations -- Cisco, General Electric, Honeywell, Google -- have been working hand in glove with the Chinese government to make this moment possible: networking the closed circuit cameras that peer from every other lamp pole, building the "Great Firewall" that allows for remote internet monitoring, and designing those self-censoring search engines.
By next year, the Chinese internal security market is set to be worth $33-billion. Several of the larger Chinese players in the field have recently taken their stocks public on U.S. exchanges, hoping to cash in the fact that, in volatile times, security and defense stocks are seen as the safe bets. China Information Security Technology, for instance, is now listed on the NASDAQ and China Security and Surveillance is on the NYSE. A small clique of U.S. hedge funds has been floating these ventures, investing more than $150-million in the past two years. The returns have been striking. Between October 2006 and October 2007, China Security and Surveillance's stock went up 306 percent.
Much of the Chinese government's lavish spending on cameras and other surveillance gear has taken place under the banner of "Olympic Security." But how much is really needed to secure a sporting event? The price tag has been put at a staggering $12-billion -- to put that in perspective, Salt Lake City, which hosted the Winter Olympics just five months after September 11, spent $315 million to secure the games. Athens spent around $1.5-billion in 2004. Many human rights groups have pointed out that China's security upgrade is reaching far beyond Beijing: there are now 660 designated "safe cities" across the country, municipalities that have been singled out to receive new surveillance cameras and other spy gear. And of course all the equipment purchased in the name of Olympics safety -- iris scanners, "anti-riot robots" and facial recognition software -- will stay in China after the games are long gone, free to be directed at striking workers and rural protestors.
What the Olympics have provided for Western firms is a palatable cover story for this chilling venture. Ever since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, U.S. companies have been barred from selling police equipment and technology to China, since lawmakers feared it would be directed, once again, at peaceful demonstrators. That law has been completely disregarded in the lead up to the Olympics, when, in the name of safety for athletes and VIPs (including George W. Bush), no new toy has been denied the Chinese state.
There is a bitter irony here. When Beijing was awarded the games seven years ago, the theory was that international scrutiny would force China's government to grant more rights and freedom to its people. Instead, the Olympics have opened up a backdoor for the regime to massively upgrade its systems of population control and repression. And remember when Western companies used to claim that by doing business in China, they were actually spreading freedom and democracy? We are now seeing the reverse: investment in surveillance and censorship gear is helping Beijing to actively repress a new generation of activists before it has the chance to network into a mass movement.
The numbers on this trend are frightening. In April 2007, officials from 13 provinces held a meeting to report back on how their new security measures were performing. In the province of Jiangsu, which, according to the South China Morning Post, was using "artificial intelligence to extend and improve the existing monitoring system" the number of protests and riots "dropped by 44 per cent last year." In the province of Zhejiang, where new electronic surveillance systems had been installed, they were down 30 per cent. In Shaanxi, "mass incidents" -- code for protests -- were down by 27 per cent in a year. Dong Lei, the province's deputy party chief, gave part of the credit to a huge investment in security cameras across the province. "We aim to achieve all day and all-weather monitoring capability," he told the gathering.
Activists in China now find themselves under intense pressure, unable to function even at the limited levels they were able to a year ago. Internet cafes are filled with surveillance cameras, and surfing is carefully watched. At the offices of a labor rights group in Hong Kong, I met the well-known Chinese dissident Jun Tao. He had just fled the mainland in the face of persistent police harassment. After decades of fighting for democracy and human rights, he said the new surveillance technologies had made it "impossible to continue to function in China."
It's easy to see the dangers of a high tech surveillance state in far off China, since the consequences for people like Jun are so severe. It's harder to see the dangers when these same technologies creep into every day life closer to home-networked cameras on U.S. city streets, "fast lane" biometric cards at airports, dragnet surveillance of email and phone calls. But for the global homeland security sector, China is more than a market; it is also a showroom. In Beijing, where state power is absolute and civil liberties non-existent, American-made surveillance technologies can be taken to absolute limits.
The first test begins today: Can China, despite the enormous unrest boiling under the surface, put on a "harmonious" Olympics? If the answer is yes, like so much else that is made in China, Police State 2.0 will be ready for export.
Read my full report on how U.S. corporations are helping to build China's high tech Police State in Rolling Stone.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is now out in paperback. You can find extensive resources related to the book at www.shockdoctrine.org.
Copyright © 2008 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
76 Comments so far
Show All"Beijing Olympic Games Opening Ceremony Blacks Out Most of Twentieth Century" -- http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/olym-a12.shtml
read this article a few days after the fact, so i missed all the comment thread fireworks.
but i can take it back to comment #1.
redruby: are you retarded?
In the spirit of the recent Tropic Thunder controversy, I figured that was as resonant a term as any for such reactionary, apologist rhetoric.
China doesn't need anyone making more excuses for their behavior. Haven't we seen enough of that in the US?
Really important article, and thinking, I ask whose going to worry when the lampposts are all under water very soon? This sort of writing is entertaining, so ernest, it's a great game keeps everyone occupied with worrying about rubbish! We know that mind control and population control exists in the American and other plutocracies as for example the copied oligarchy of Canada, and the great dictatorships using other kinds of population control, from ethnic cleansing to simple political murder world over, tell us something new? How does one control 1.3 billion people who are ignorant, unfed, with little water and laden with toxic chemicals, from their production of consumer products for so-called democracies?
Naomi, comes from privilege and a political family in Canada that lives the "good life" and hobnobs with the "great and wealthy," who fights for the masses, and noble causes, what else to do with great intelligence and an unnecessary social conscience in a dying world. A woman trying to convince a world of little knowledge, beer-drinking jock populations who couldn't care less.
Give the girl a break she is doing her best!
Watch in what kind of "surveillance" technology our own government will use during the Dem convention (and the Repub) coming up....
Already the "regulated" areas are being built to "fence in" the demonstrators.....
Welcome to Amerika!!
Capitalism is monetized materialism, which in turn, is at the bottom of the ladder of ascending states of enlightenment - i.e., ever-higher states of spiritual awareness.
At our core, we are spiritual beings endowed with individual freedom and power, and those opaque-minded materialists who seek to lord their authority over others are imbued with the spiritually-impoverished delusion that if they curtail the freedom and diminish the power of other people, there will be more of the same for them - then, they can rip off those folks' material goods with impunity, to boot!
The early Christians pulled the plug on the Roman emperors when they ceased to fear the State: this was achieved through their belief in an afterlife that placed them at a higher spiritual state than this earthly one (which is, ironically, what gives Islamist terrorists and suicide bombers their strength). Additionally, the attendant lack of attachment to their posessions clinched it.
Totalitarian regimes' denial of spirituality, and prohibition of personal religious expression and observance, undermines the societies they keep in thrall. Here, in the U.S., so does duplicity and hypocracy on the part of leaders who prate about "faith-based", "American" values, and then lie about activities of members of an "Axis of Evil" in order to go kill and torture them, at the same time insuring that the millions of millions of public dollars spent on the war being waged goes to their private-contractor cronies. (As NateW stated a day and a half ago: "Crony capitalism is a constant feature of authoritarian governments despite their stated political ideology, even communism (where the black market was dominated by party functionaries)...".)
Ah, well - Siouxrose sees that the whole mess we're discussing is just another episode in the human saga that is re-written time and again as we learn to love and give, not to hate or fear, and take away. In this world, what goes around, comes around, and Pete Seeger beautifully put to music a graceful poem from Ecclesiastes that many of us know and love to sing.
Also, remember that the modern Olympic Games are, first of all, about each athlete's own struggle to improve with each go at the standing records - personal, world and Olympic.
Do you recall the sobering chant from the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, as Daly's henchmen fell upon the crowd? "The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!" Our nation's participation in the Games is a fait accompli, and we can make the best of it - or not. I feel that the Olympics, through its athletes and the many spectators from other countries who the Chinese people will meet and observe coming to their homeland, can have a profoundly good effect on its hosting nation, and "We the people" can play a positive role in this by focusing on the positive side of this international celebration of human excellence and triumph. Let's "Give Peace a Chance", and out of the lemons, make some summertime lemonade! (A-h-h-h, slurp!)
China is not remotely communist, Klein should know better.
MiMiCcS,
I suggest you read the comment above by susnow. It was directed at a previous comment by Redruby, but it applies to your initial comment as well.
RedRuby,
You and your professional paid bloggers for China, do the world a favor and jump off a cliff. The citizens of the world are in a battle of freedom against elite repressoin - same as it ever was. It would seem that 40 years ago, there was more freedom. Public cameras are very intimidating. How can you do any sort of illicit protest or vandalism or meeting when your every move can be tracked. It's a very chilling effect.
The elites are idiots, like all elites gnerally become, if they think that cameras will stop true revolution however. Its all ameasure of how far people get pushed, and the fact is, that compared to the ancient world, or even early 20th century standards, many people are not suffering enough for revolution, which makes the usurping of our rights even easier. But the elites should really remember that is the suffering gets to hunger or being murdered in a large enough percentage of the population, then no surveillance is going to stop people, becaues the mob has the numbers. If the elites want to squeeze people to that point, which they always seem stupid enough to do, then it will happen. China is doing such dirt to Africa and its neighbors, it really is a foul country. Eventually the Chinese will get their reward, just like America has been getting from the Arabs.
Its really critical that people let these corporations know that we really do hate them - especially warm, fuzzy brands like Google.
Naomi Klein writes: "you will instantly forget all that unpleasantness as your brain is zapped by the cultural/athletic/political extravaganza that is the Beijing Olympics".
No, I will not forget and my brain will not be zapped. I will be avoiding watching any of it.
Given the widespread chronic poverty of large parts of China, it is sickening that billions of dollars are being wasted for this Olympic extavaganza.
The athletic competition of the Olympics loses its fascination for me when I realize that it is just another mass spectacle designed to:
1. Deliver as large an audience aspossible for corporate sponsers.
2. Provide a tactical exercise in the effective implementation of a security state right out of Orwell's 1984.
3. Make lotsa lotsa money for those multinational corporations seeking to market their wares to accomplish this nightmare existence.
Were I an Olympic athlete I would resent being a shill in this con game and befoere you say its impossible remember John Carlops and Tommie Smith--it only takes a few principled individuals to rip the mask off such a charade--I wonder if there are any among the athletes or coaches over in Beijing.
Just after Kurt Vonnegut died, I bought a few replacement copies of his books; I don't know what became of the original paperbacks.
One was "Hocus Pocus", published in 1990. I finally picked it up last week to re-read. As with Vonnegut's other works, I again found myself reading passages that seemed startlingly fresh and relevant.
Here, the protagonist-- a teacher and Vietnam vet named Eugene Debs Hartke-- encounters a "typical Ruling Class chowderhead", a parent attending graduation ceremonies. The parent asks Hartke why he seems so depressed; Hartke has just been fired by the college trustees, but he doesn't feel inclined to say so.
So...
________________________________
"He told me to cheer up, that 1,000,000,000 Chinese were about to throw off the yoke of Communism. After they did that, he said, they would all want automobiles and tires and gasoline and so forth.
I pointed out that virtually all American industries having to do with automobiles either were owned or had been run out of business by the Japanese.
'And what is to prevent you from doing what I've done?' he said. 'It's a free country.' He said that his entire portfolio consisted of stocks in Japanese corporations.
Can you imagine what 1,000,000,000 Chinese in automobiles would do to each other and what's left of the atmosphere?"
________________________________
I've lost track; do the literati still refuse to take Vonnegut seriously?
MiMICCS: My intent was NOT to give Bush a free pass. And while I think he's mostly a puppet of entrenched elite interests, if I were asked to sit in when the lords of karma convene his case in the afterlife, I assure you I would NOT be gentle.
What I was alluding to was what the astro-logos portrays, and that is, the entrance of Pluto--the Shiva/Vishnu "destroyer-rebuilder" planet into the most austere, pro-state/pro-authoritarian sign of Capricorn for a cycle that will last almost two decades (and is now in its formative phase)--portends the "homeland security state spying on citizens" format. It IS a global phenomena. Yes, some will make $ from this. I remember after 911 this creepy millionaire republican who used to hang out at the same St Pete coffee house I did, amused to hear his astrological previews, never once even paying for a cup of coffee for me... made noise about getting into the security business then and there, understanding the profits to be made from fear and the purposeful fomenting of paranoia.
The Course in Miracles and its most dynamic proponent, Marianne Williamson, recognize essentially two dominant emotions that govern persons, and thus by extension, our world. There is fear (some prefer to call it hatred) and love. There's too much of one and far too little of the other... bring it on, Dianne Ross!
Wow, really frightening stuff. You know, this might help explain why the Democrats have voted yes to FISA and other laws to repress our freedoms. It could be that there is a burgeoning security industry that is lobbying Congress hard to create a demand right here in the US for their products--the China Olympics is great advertising. Somebody should check into this.
What happens if the Chinese don't cooperate on global warming green house gas reduction efforts?
publius perfidius makes very interesting points, mostly overlooked by Klein's excellent piece. It needs a book or several of them to fully explore what's happening in China, but publius has a good rough outline for one.
What no nation hellbent on achieving full-steam capitalism can possibly avoid is the environmental consequences they'll face. As Naomi shows in her book on Disaster Capitalism, the consequences are catastrophic, not only environmentally but economically, except of course for the gleeful plunderers and rapers of the earth.
The Chinese now have to face the inevitable environmental meltdown of their brainless commitment to economic domination, built mainly on slave labor, and the Olympics will be a fiercely regimented effort to conceal the brutal dynamics propelling the real Chinese miracle, but it won't work. They may hold nearly all our debt and could bring us down overnight if we piss them off, but ultimately they're just as fucked as we are.
On second thought, ~publius perfidius~'s line is the more interesting.
Ignore mine, discuss his.
Have Fun,
-matti.
I think the Beijing Olympics might be the most obvious "Authoritarian Preparedness Moment" of the last fifty years.
We all realize that racism and nationalism are now the most effective general "immunizers" to the flood of propaganda about the "normalcy" of the Communist Party of China's ridiculous level of control over the thoughts and actions of the People of China, right?
It's sad, and I'm sad to write it, but I think it's true.
And I hope all students of the History of the 20th Century can reasonably conjecture as to where a worlview filtered through racism and nationalism can lead a People, correct?
All "progressives", and all "democratic leftists", and all who believe in the advancement of the People through the greater INCLUSION of individual persons should consider this possibility.
This is our Work.
The World is going through changes, there will be many storms and tumults.
Our Task is to minimize the impact of these tumults, and to PREVENT them from harming the People's "progress" or "advancement".
At the very least we must work to hinder the advancement of Authoritarian Systems, under whatever guise, Capitalist, Communist, Nationalist, Corporatist, Consumerist, or any other.
This Work need not be Earth-Shaking or impressive.
Simply holding True, in coversation with others or in one's own Mind, may be Work enough.
Whatever you do, do not lose Heart.
Do not give up on that Joy in Life that we all new as children -the one that has sent us down this path of actually caring about the World around us.
Rejoice in the World.
If you can not rejoice in people's Actions, rejoice in their Potential -while correcting their actions.
The bottom line is the Official Slogan of the Mille Lacs Band Ojibwe Indian Casino:
Have Fun.
Have Fun everybody,
After all, your payin' for the Ride.
-matti.
China is a semi-soft tyranny at the moment, the political texture equivalent of old style margarine. As it has already, amazingly and rapidly morphed from an anciently entrenched, profoundly authoritarian culture into this semi-soft modern tyranny in the blink of an eye, it would probably have no trouble morphing further into a softer-yet tyranny, such as a full blown, systemic state capitalism with make-believe democratic political and legal institutions -- somewhat like the USA.
No trouble, that is, were not for its guaranteed, coming political destabilization vis-a-vis huge scale, impending environmental disasters, the potentiated surge peaks of which are now irreversible. As the World Watch Institute has credibly documented: major air, land, and water resources in China are now so intermodally toxified that no amount of short-to-mid-term remediation can stave off multi-generational genetic disfiguration, drastic mean IQ decline, starvation, and death for scores of millions of people in the upcoming years.
While the same fate is possible if not likely for the US and much of the rest of the world in a longer term, China's last two decades of unprecedentedly rapid and completely unregulated industrialization bears no comparison to anything in human history -- either in quantity or quality of toxins produced and irrecoverably dispersed into a confined global subregion. The Chinese are, in short, screwed - and more than a few of their more honest leaders are awakening to this fact with a mixture of horror and bitterness.
More to follow on this post -- the late hour demands shutdown for me just now...
lisa3210peace: "One Third of Ralph Nader's investments, millions of dollars, are invested in Cisco"
We take the most progressive candidate we can get. If Nader is elected and his policies reflect a destructive corporate bias for whatever reason, then we vote in a more progressive candidate next cycle.
Kate Anne: "Keep the television sets turned off of the Olympics for political reasons and ask others to do similarly"
When the people learn to select all of their exchange/association for political reasons, the people will have full political power.
bluesky: "The Olympics are glorification of the few over the many for sports ability and have always been used for political purposes."
Elites find that cultivating elitism benefits elites.
madcow: "Imagine Gore's two Supreme Court Justices sitting on the court right now"
Can't imagine a Demok admin better than a Repuk admin until the Demoks finally heave themselves out of the extreme right gutter and move on over to the left.
OldRascal: 'The "modern" Olympics have been nothing but an excuse by developers to have their way with the local population under cover of an international sporting event.'
The Olympics are like everything else: Can and will be used/abused by different parties for different agendas. They key is to identify and block the bad agendas.
George Orwell the 'guest' of honour???
The people who tell us not to watch the Olympics have it exactly right.
Don't watch.
Turn it off, or if you are completely hooked, watch a channel that doesn't carry the olympics.
Cable systems these days know exactly when you have the box on and what channel you are tuned to.
The advertisers WILL figure it out.
Siouxrose said "When people blame Bush or blame capitalism or blame Israel, they don't realize this trend of watching citizens and arresting "dissidents" and leaving them without legal representation IS becoming a global phenomena. Originally linked to terrorism or some version of homeland security, now the monster is loose and since those in power enjoy having these new powers over citizens, and those who would protest may be first to be silenced, the means to regain a modicum of balance between the private/personal and the state/authoritarian is fast becoming eclipsed."
You seem to be giving Bush a pass here. As the US goes, so goes the world. Our acceptance of these procedures at home in the wake of 9/11 to protect us from "terrorists" lends credibility to those other nations who follow in our footsteps, and allows countries like China and Israel who led the way to continue their merry way.
The US is now leading the Global Police state. Globalization is about Totalitarian One World Government.
I remember the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Police State roundup of "undesirables" given one-way bus tickets to remote locations, etc, etc, etc.
"Redevelopment" of intown neighborhoods, replacing old one family dwellings and the nation's oldest and finest multi-family housing projects with shining new condos and skyscrapers.
The "modern" Olympics have been nothing but an excuse by developers to have their way with the local population under cover of an international sporting event.
The Olympics should be banned.
Now if this article is about Global spying then why single out only China? Here's what another writer said of global spying:
"If the Chinese want to spy on people, they could learn a lot from the Greek authorities. In 2004, Athens installed a vast computer surveillance network, consisting of thousands of hidden cameras and microphones across the city that could analyse dozens of languages for any hint of 'terrorist chatter'. Under the advice of the British authorities – who, having installed more than 20 per cent of the world's closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras on our tiny island over the past 10 years, are the undisputed kings of CCTV – the Greek also introduced hi-tech CCTV cameras on the streets and roads around the Olympic village (8)."
The writer is Brendan O'Neil of spiked.com.
Note his comment on Britain and CCTV cameras in England.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5532/
Again I ask, if this article is about a global phenomenon then why is only China singled out? Nope! This is just more China bashing cleverly disguised. Klein has joined the neo-con China bashing crowd and has found her big stick in 'big corporations and spying'.
Klein is just trying to distract her readers from what's happening in their own backyard by cravenly joining the latest fad - 'bash China'.
Great posts: TJ, SAMSON & YKNOT. By the way DOLKAR, TJ DID make that point (about the global trend of the expedited high tech security state) and I've been watching it, too.
When people blame Bush or blame capitalism or blame Israel, they don't realize this trend of watching citizens and arresting "dissidents" and leaving them without legal representation IS becoming a global phenomena. Originally linked to terrorism or some version of homeland security, now the monster is loose and since those in power enjoy having these new powers over citizens, and those who would protest may be first to be silenced, the means to regain a modicum of balance between the private/personal and the state/authoritarian is fast becoming eclipsed.
If you like Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court, you're gonna love McCain's appointments! So by all means, vote for Nader -- or better yet, vote directly for McCain as it will be the same effect either way.
I love Ralph Nader, and I appreciate his principles and convictions and those of his followers. But I hope --unless you live in a state where it won't even be close anyway-- anyone considering actually voting for him will think twice.
lisa3210peace;
Maybe Nader does have a large investment in Cisco. No one is perfect.
With that said, Mr. Obama and his party of thugs are ready to continue the real ongoing murder of men, women and children.
I'll take Nader's not-so-best-side (if its true) over the continued murder by the thugs of your beloved candidate, your useless congress and your sorry-ass party, any day.
Po-leeeeeze!
JDK posted a link above to Robert Reich -- Capitalism doesn't require democracy. Americans don't understand this and need to learn it fast. China and Russia are both great examples of how capitalism can "succeed" without democracy.
And right now this is the difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. You all can complain about how the Democratic party lately has acceded too much to the Right, but a Dem president and a Dem majority in Congress will at least slow down the capitalism-sans-democracy process in the US.
A vote for the GOP is a vote for capitalism without democracy; fascism if you prefer. A vote for Nader is as good as a vote for McCain. And if you think that's OK; for example, you think that four years of McCain will finally teach the US voters the lesson they need to learn, you are fooling yourself: on the road to Police State 2.0, we're less than four years away from the point of no return.
Remarkable how few commenters seem to have understood Naomi's piece at all. Maybe if they'd read The Shock Doctrine they'd have a bigger context in which to place this big red flag on what's happening here. It's not just China, folks -- it's not just the U.S. -- it's global. Naomi is pointing at what the Chinese have on display for the world, and the implications speak for themselves. We're not in Kansas anymore. Forget substances, get to work directly on your minds. Naomi's appears to work extremely well.
Back on topic: the Han Chinese have another "master race" thing going, it seems. These games remind me too much of the affair in Nazi Germany. The non-Han are equivalents of the Jews, gays, etc. of that era. The totalitarian thing is also what we are tending to in this country, but the Chinese are taking us to school right now.
marc m: Cute. Throw that stuff away and start smoking pot.
It is an analgesic, it kills pain, and helps one relax which helps pinched nerves.
Motrin alcohol and percocet suck. unless pureed in a blender together.
klever - 66 and depressed. Stop reading this sight and you will feel better - I promise.
dubet:
You expressed yourself in an interesting manner.
The resistance to marijuana has been from a Byzantine alliance of far right Christians-big pharma-the "corrections" industry-and organized crime.
There must be hundreds of thousands in prison just for possession.What a horrible waste of lives and taxpayer dollars.
In my case-I'm 66 and suffer from numerous conditions including arthritis and depression.Were it not for the severe penalties involved-I'd be a frequent smoker.
Are our Canadian neighbors stupid?I think not.
I agree with you dubet-smoking puts most people into a gentler frame of mind-often leaning to creativity.A favorite memory was watching Sterling Hayden in his numerous interviews with Tom Snyder.He was a heavy smoker which didn't interfere one bit with his acting or writing.He did have a "verbal twitch" of saying "eh!" frequently-which probably pissed off the "law and order crowd" no end.
Opps I forget - the doctor said not to mix with alchahol. I never listen to him. He yelled at me also and called my even worse names than you.
Lisa3210 - I'm sorry for my outbust a cople of nights ago. It was not me speaking - you see I'm on pain meds for several pinched nerves in my upper back. I am very sorry, please forgive me. The doctor has lowered the dosage to 2400mg of mortin and two percs. It does the job but does not make me ctazy. no joke here - drugs are powerful and can make you do and say things without forsight and control. If its possible, please let me know that you accept my apology and we are OK. marc
dubet: you equate smoking marijuana with non-violence?
No Way. That evil weed comes either from seeds, right? In which case the MALES are slaughtered at their first indication of SEXUAL PREFERENCE,
OR, cuttings are cloned, sliced from a young screaming bleeding female, sure she recovers,
And they all grow up, the memories of their men distant-THEN THEY TOO ARE MURDERED; pretty girls in their prime, virgins,
So that they can be dried out AND IMMOLATED!
dubet: that is pure violence.
"Through all the nasty news stories, however, the Chinese government has seemed amazingly unperturbed. That's because it is betting on this: when the opening ceremonies begin friday, you will instantly forget all that unpleasantness as your brain is zapped by the cultural/athletic/political extravaganza that is the Beijing Olympics."
No, Naomi, that's not the reason. That's what you would like us to think! The real reason is that the government knows that it has the support of the people, a fundamental fact that many in the west don't want to accept because they wish to continue to delude themselves that the Chinese are just waiting for the right moment to overthrow their government and welcome conquering western armies as they land on China a la Iraq.
Last month the left of centre New Republic ran an article on China demanding that "our ultimate solidarity" should lie not with the "odious government" in Beijing but "the billion long-suffering men and women of the world's largest dictatorship."
'Long-suffering'? Ummm, obviously they didn't bother to ask the Chinese about that. Especially when just recently a Pew world poll showed that 86% expressed happiness with their lives and the direction the country is going.
But their opinions don't seem to matter to these westerners. Why? Maybe it's because the Chinese are too stupid to know what's good for them. They need people like Klein and the New Republic to tell them...the way Bush is telling the Iraqis...
MiMiCcs said it best…Naomi has lost her credibility. Deng Xiaoping said it better"
"It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice"..
Well, Lennon said,
If you go carryin' pictures of Chairman Mao,
You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow.
You and Mimi are embracing totalitarian thinking. (It seems like you'rs saying, "If you're against China you're pro-West & pro-capitalist."
MiMi,
I don't think it's fair to call the critics of China on this website hypocrites. Most folks on this site are VERY critical of US foreign and domestic policy.
To my knowledge nobody on this site is pro-amerian imperialism and anti-chinese imperialism.
Nobody is pro-American police state and anti-chinese police state.
Sure there is a question of degree, which we can debate. I tend to think China is worse on domestic policy than the US. In terms of numbers the US is worse internationally. At the same time chinese "communist" elites and american capitalist elites eat from the same trough.
So maybe there is hypocrisy on china by mainstream dems who have done nothing but support American imperialism and the illegal war/occupation. But lets have a civilized progressive conversation without the name calling.
P.S. Don't you thionk it's a bit of a knee jerk reaction to say, "Naomi has lost her credibility"?
MiMiCcs said it best...Naomi has lost her credibility. Deng Xiaoping said it better"
"It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice"..
"U.S. companies have been barred from selling police equipment and technology to China"
Israel is the leader in this field BTW.
The hypocrisy on China is simply amazing. If we were to hold Olympics in the US today, WTF do you think security would look like?. We are doing all the same things China is doing anyways, and the rest of the world is following the US lead. The plan is by 2015, the police state will be global.
Naomi has lost her credibility.
Does this mean that Unveiling Police State 3.0 will be Ms. Klein next write-up about the UK's use of drone planes to keep tabs on the Welsh, the Scots, the East Anglians, Londoners and both Ireland's the chosen and the unclean?
The question that is of uppermost interest to Americans is what right do its administrations have in policing the world from some 160 military bases scattered around the globe. Attempts at being cutesy in belaboring whose emperor is without clothes is highschoolish. Every state is primarely a police-like entity and policing it becomes a question of degree and based on historical events the only standard that determines whether the policing has become onerous or not is when a revolution takes place.
boy, do we need marijuana in a big way...not because of all of the 'other' uses for it, although there are hundreds, but because of the wonderful, enlightened, magical and natural perspective the smoking of marijuana creates...we need a positive philosophical shift away from industrialization\consumption, and marijuana is key...we, all of us at the same time, need to get high...we need to get a perspective that has been physically, violently taken away from us...a perspective much more conducive to living in harmony with one another and the planet...we need to say no to cameras, no to surveillance...we need to do so before it's too late...cameras and data mining software work 24/7, just waiting and watching...forever! We need to remember that numbers of actual people are on our side...we've only been outnumbered by the automated system...we need to take our lives back, and smoking marijuana will help us see that, help us understand how we might work together to do it...soon, they won't even need anyone to call the police...they'll just show up, take you or your loved one or your neighbor away, and the street will go quiet again, and no one will ever know where you or anyone else went...the window of opportunity is closing...this is not environmentally related, this is human related...they have prepared weaponry\jails to support their cameras...why do they hate marijuana? because it is absolutely wonderful (unsurpassed) at raising the human consciousness and grows freely everywhere...many of you may disagree, but time is running out, so I must be vocal...
Published on Tuesday, January 10, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
China: Capitalism Doesn't Require Democracy
by Robert B. Reich
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0110-42.htm
Capitalism and freedom are not mutually exclusive.
lisa3210peace, I have friends from/in China. If Obama's vision for the US is in keeping with your admiration for the quality of life in China, and the Democrat gets elected, good luck, you are going to need it. Love the Nader non sequitur by the way, not very subtle is it?
Wang Lung had won the victory over himself.
He loved Big Brother.
in response to lisa3210peace's comment
"One Third of Ralph Nader's investments, millions of dollars, are invested in Cisco"
that may be the case, and i'm not defending him, but unless you keep all your money under you're mattress, your invested in corruption as well. Here's an interesting article:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/49657/your_bank_account_probably_supports_cluster_bombs_and_big_co...
Naomi, you are a Goddess, Athena and Aphrodite combined. But then,
Nothing Exists.
Now the reason for Bush's visit to China becomes more apparent: to learn how it's done.
Naomi Klein missed the mark a bit when she dubbed China as "McCommunism," when a prior appellation is more accurate and indicative what is going on in most of the rest of East Asia: crony capitalism. Crony capitalism is a constant feature of authoritarian governments despite their stated political ideology, even communism (where the black market was dominated by party functionaries). Part of the psychosis of an authoritarian state is the need for "social harmony." This dovetails nicely with Chinese history and myth (see "Mandate of Heaven"). Simply put, the Chinese Communist Party is merely another dynasty like the Han, Manchu, & Sung: all that is different is the method of picking the figurehead.
Hey Samson,
You don't seem to be living in the real world here. We live in a flawed system in the USA. It's a two party system that's become quite dysfunctional. We don't have a parliamentary democracy where a minor party can get 6% of the vote and form a coalition with some other party and then help rule. Here in the USA we have a choice between two parties that are too alike in too many ways.
But there are differences!
Imagine what the world would look like if we were just finishing eight years of a Gore administration instead of the disaster that's been Bush/Cheney. Imagine Gore's two Supreme Court Justices sitting on the court right now instead of Roberts and Alito. Imagine an enlightened Gore energy policy. Kyoto might be ratified. No Iraq War. No civil liberties falling away...
So if you and others here who always bash the democratic party for being the same as the republican, continue your campaign to discredit Obama, and we end up with McCain, I hope you like the police state that we get when he solidifies the Bush agenda.
"By the end of this year, police officials say, more than 100 cameras will have begun monitoring cars moving through Lower Manhattan... The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as the plan is called, will resemble London's so-called Ring of Steel..."
"According to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people in the country..."
"The NYPD's new firepower consists of cops with Mp5 submachine guns, rifles, body armor and bomb-sniffing dogs..."
"Privacy International filed a complaint with the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner's Office regarding the plans to implement 12,000 cameras across Toronto..."
"Los Angeles CCTV Camera Systems are now being installed..."
And we're worried about China, are we?...
this is truly freightening.
Naomi Klein is quite obviously cooperating with the neo-cons who bash China.
America is clearly much more repressive to its own citizens than China.
Anyone who doesn't see this is blinded by the MSM and the corporate government.
redruby, why do you equate massive surveillance and repression of dissent with capitalism? Do you believe that in a free market, the citizens would choose these "services" from a government?
Don't watch tv period. Turn off the radio too. Buy or find the music you like and listen on an ipod or mediaplayer on your laptop or pc. You will be more free if you refuse to play their games and listen to their garbage. The Olympics are glorification of the few over the many for sports ability and have always been used for political purposes. Don't participate. Don't watch. You will be happier, healthier, and free.
China's industrial policy combining authoritarian control and cheap labor, both skilled and unskilled, has worked very well for them. Of course, with the flood of money entering China, there comes significant corruption; China is no different than other countries in this regard. If the authoritarian aspect can keep wages low while the country prospers, then money will continue to flow their direction. It will be interesting to see how long this approach lasts, i.e., when will Chinese workers tire of a suppressed standard of living compared to others? I don't see any major advantages for Chinese companies apart from the huge supply of cheap labor (again, both skilled and unskilled).
susnow, I do get the point; everyone wants China to be in their own image of what it should be. If China needs to or wants to go through a period of population control or surveillance or a gussied-up trial presentation to the rest of the world for a few weeks even if it does involve the evil capitalism, then it will do so and our value critique of an ancient culture matters not. tj makes good points
Keep the television sets turned off of the Olympics for political reasons and ask others to do similarly. (And don't go watching the events on YouTube.com or other such sites either.)
samson;
It's true that a state doesn't need to run a profit, but if it runs a deficit too long the money made by the corporations becomes worthless paper.
I wasn't just arguing profits either, one of the reasons that Germany lost WWII was because they were killing people rather than using trains to carry supplies to the front lines.
"1984" is here. Orwell's dark predictions came true a couple of decades later then he thought.
It doesn't matter what you call it, it's coming to a neighbourhood near you.
I think skippy is just arguing accounting. Who's books do the profits end up on? For a corporatist state, it makes no sense for the state to run a profit. That benefits no one they care about. In fact, by design, the state runs at a deficit in order to support corporate profits.
Sure, state money is spent on these camps. But that's just a way of taking tax money that should be used for everyone's benefit and instead using it in such a way that it creates profits on the corporate books.
BTW, while Mr. Nader may have had his investments in Cisco, who cisco contributes to is a more interesting question.
Go here, and type in Cisco under employer to search. http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/index.php
I just scanned the first page, and I don't see Mr. Nader's name on the list. But I sure see "Barack Obama", "Hillary Clinton" and several Republicans. Or, since in this area Obama, Clinton and the Republicans are all the same, I should just say a bunch of OTHER Republicans.
Vote Obama to have your very own US surveilence state. Or vote McCain, it doesn't make any difference on this issue. Bill Clinton was the same as Daddy Bush and Dubya on this issue too.
Naomi, not to worry--Americans can multi-task! Besides keeping up with celebrity reproduction, we are totally informed on public policy; I bet at least 300 million have tuned out Rush briefly to read your post! Then, we are going to vote for the latest Great White (well, half white) Hope served up by the Democrats, a bastion of civil libertarians, so unlike those naughty Repubs. Both of which parties have wisely steered us away from wasting our votes on any little parties which might actually threaten effective change--it could rock our capsizing boat! Or we might vote McCain at the last minute; he knows how to win wars, and for sure will sucessfully finish Bush's war on the middle class. Anyway, we will have performed our civic duty for the next eight years, so what's the worry? Besides, an electoral governmental system has never been quickly transformed into a fascist, genocidal totalitarian military regime, never in history, right, since we can't remember any history, it never happened! You worry too much, Naomi!
I'm thinking of the original form of them in South Africa.
They are a money drain for the state. Companies might make a bit of lucre off of them, but for the state it's a money loser. A bit like the prison industry now seen in the usa, they might be operated by private companies, but the states still end up funneling much needed cash to prop up the prison industry.
While McCommunism is a nice PR hook, it is not exactly accurate. What Klein describes so well is nothing more than a successful manifestation of plain old totalitarianism, a word that has been around for a long time.
What is truly important here is the description of the cooperation between the allegedly capitalist West and nominally communist China.
Chinese totalitarianism, Russian totalitarianism and Western corporate totalitarianism are merging to create global totalitarianism for the first time in human history (though many rulers have had this dream since the dawn of humankind). It is not inaccurate to call the situation global fascism.
I raise these points because the use of the term "McCommunism" and challenging "Chinese Communism" may further contribute to the hysterical red-baiting climate in the U.S.
There are many real and theoretical examples of successful democratic socialism (a form of communism) around the globe -- even in the U.S.
We have to be careful not to undermine them or feed into the general red-baiting habit.
Also, I think this may be a consequence of blogging, which often goes for the quick "sound bite." Certainly this is not a general characteristic of Ms. Klein's almost-always brilliant and down-to-earth writing and analysis.
"but concentration camps rarely produce a profit."
ask Ford Motor Company that question. During world war ii in Germany, I believe they used concentration camp labor in their factories.
Let see. We've got the Democrats fully signed on to making America just like what is described here. I'm seeing it here in Denver where the occurance of the Dems convention is the excuse used for the surveilence cameras here popping up on every light pole. And of course the bills that keep passing Congress that ever expand the US Govs ability to spy on Americans all are doing so with the support of the Dem leadership, with many Dem votes, and certainly with the absence of any filibuster from our faux-opposition party.
Meanwhile, there's someone out there who's been trying to fight and oppose this for years, including running for President once the Democrats had obviously become a part of the problem in this area (and many others).
So, naturally the Democrats use this as a place to do yet some more Nader-bashing.
If you like the idea of America becoming a police state just like this, then please continue to vote Democrat.
If you oppose this, then stop voting Democrat.
And everytime the Dems Nader-bash, you should be asking the question of what is it that they don't want you looking at? What is it that they don't want you hearing? What is it that the Dems are doing that can't stand the light of day or the presence of any effective opposition party in this country?
The last is the really key point. Watch the Dems and be amazed at how they never, ever fight the Republicans and this agenda. But, when there's even a hint of an opposition party starting to emerge, watch just how visciously the Democrats can fight then.
Then ask that last question again. Why is it that the Dems are so visciously opposed to any real opposition party forming in this country?
The fact that our lovely little Dem-supporting, Nader-basher above is pointing out all the supposed benefits from the Chinese one-party police state should make you very afraid.
"authoritarian capitalism,"
Isn't that Fascism? I think Mussolini would agree.
'remember when Western companies used to claim that by doing business in China, they were actually spreading freedom and democracy? We are now seeing the reverse: investment in surveillance and censorship gear is helping Beijing to actively repress a new generation of activists before it has the chance to network into a mass movement.'
An interesting and frightening read, it's describing the real technology and motives needed to build Orwell's nineteen eighty four state. Of course the tech developed will be exported to other states that need to control or monitor the opinions of their populations.
That of course includes the states in the formerly free west and third world countries. Add the surveilence to the climate change problem and we'll be utterly screwed.
All this to make us safe from terrorism. State repression to limit individual protest. I still hope that the state will not be able to afford to continue on the path of 'disaster capitalism', don't exactly know how that will happen, but concentration camps rarely produce a profit.
The disturbing thing is just how eerily close this is to what's happening in America.
Surveilence cameras going up everywhere. Ever-expanding police forces. A government that now has the right (thanks Democrats!) to monitor all Americans internet traffic.
A Police-Surveillance State?
"Some of America's most powerful corporations-Cisco, General Electric, Honeywell..have been working hand in glove to make this possible."
One Third of Ralph Nader's investments, millions of dollars, are invested in Cisco.
By definition if repressive surveillance police states are evil.
Voting for Nader is PURE LESSER EVILISM! I love this.
I invite someone to drefend this. Please.
Naomi I feel failed to appreciate how much the quality of life has improved for the average Chinese citizen in the last thirty years.
Bless Naomi Klein.
Best Wishes PRC. Obama '08.
China's current population is about 1.3 Billion which is approximately 20% of the Global population, I wonder if there is a tipping point when it comes to a Global Police State 2.0. When Jun Tao states that it is "impossible to continue to function in China" will it continue much longer that any of us can function out of China? I think the idea that doing business with China will make China a "free" nation is naive it is more likely that China is already changing all of us.
Redruby, you completely and totally missed the point of the entire article. Ms. Klein is describing another manifestation of global disaster capitalism, of which the government of China is a part of, just as the Bush regime is a part of.
Please read again before you judge.
Some people are never pleased; you can join GWB in China-bashing. Only a few short years ago, China was under the heavy hand of Chairman Mao. They have an unusually long history of existence and culture, unlike the U.S. yet we insist they must change to suit our sensibilities. Let them find their own way and proceed the way they can or cannot. The Chinese will be around long after the melting pot of the U.S. has declined.