When China becomes the new world superpower, I wonder if it will become as war mongering as we have been. If it doesn't then the transition from American world dominance to Chinese dominance will be for the better, even though the Chinese government is far from angelic.

Very informative article!! Let us hope that the people who are in power in this country read it and take the message to heart.

"China will soon make us as dependent on Chinese green technology for the next century as we have been on Saudi oil during the last"

China won't make anyone dependent on anything. Rather, R Kennedy and his ilk wield the influence to cause USans to become dependent on China, and dependent on whatever the elites push on them. The elites pushed China on them. Will Kennedy admit it?

The answer is localism. Local production for local consumption. You may find it, like a needle in a haystack, buried in the elite propaganda. So the elites can say they said it. But did they carry it through?

Single-issue liberals, the far-left has been telling you for a long time that the single-issue jig is up. NOW you have to patch your pet issues back into the whole fabric you snipped them out of. You must embrace localism now, because you've exhausted the alternative, globalism, and proved it's a colossal failure, and your disjoint activism won't fix it.

Localism solves virtually all of the problems created by elite power concentration, 90% of all human-induced problems. So drop your pet issues and hop on the localism bandwagon before it's too late.

China won't own the USan market for green energy because local communities in the USA and worldwide are taking back energy production, food production, ALL production.
Kennedy and his elite peers won't know what hit them.

The emporer may have no clothes but the Chinese have, as of now, certainly identified the bulls eye.

"This is just the beginning ... [the United States] is an ideal target."

What was Barac Obama thinking when he let go of Van Jones ?

"Well", to quote Reagan, where's RFK2 been on the 1985 Clean Water Act deadline for polluting the Waters Kennedy "Keeps"; the early millenial, complete ecosystemic collapse of the continental US' coral reefs OR for that matter, on a crash program NOW for our DEM (Clinton/Gore promised) 1995 electric cars and the solar roof panels to power them and our homes and To PUT US BACK TO WORK?! Probably in the same place Obama's been on his DEM single-payer promise!

This cuts close to the mark.

There's little wonder China should invest in green power. The US has a large military lead on the around the Central Asian power sources, and global warming may decimate the water-based power many have long imagined would drive Chinese industrialization.

At the moment, they hold too many dollars to want the dollar to crash too drastically too quickly, and with the Fed and the government vying to pump air-money to their cronies, the dollar may inflate drastically.

To the extent the Chinese and the EU can shift from dollars and hydrocarbons, they can leave New-American-Century-type plans in the dust.

That's got to be worth an investment.

'----the Chinese have shrewdly and strategically positioned themselves to steal America's once substantial lead in renewable power.'
It is desperately foolish to see this reality in terms of the arms race and the theft.

"This is just the beginning ... [the United States] is an ideal target."-----for sales!

Chauvinism is the obdurate imposition of ones own perspective on reality. Christianity and USA democracy are fundamentally chauvinist.

Is Robert F Kennedy an idiot? Does he think Americans are fools? Are they?
These are serious questions.

NB: Idiots know that they are doing, while fools don't.

What the Hell is this article about?
Under the guise of promoting green technology, there is an abundance of fearmongering about China - "China will soon make us as dependent on Chinese green technology for the next century as we have been on Saudi oil in the last."
What rubbish.
China is NOT making us do anything. It is the ARROGANCE and STUPIDITY of the people in this country which will keep us dependant.
If anything, China has been remarkable in their efforts to be responsible about creating new and greener technologies.
Most of the references to China in this article use negative words - the chinese are " treating the energy technology (as) if it were an arms race - dominance - flooding the american market - clobbering us - poised to take away our lead."
Then, Mr. Kennedy tries to blame it on the republicans, as if the dimwit democrats are not also part of HIS problem.

China, while far from ideal, is not the greatest threat to this nation. As a matter of fact, one could easily argue that China is trying to save us from ourselves.

So, g.e. is closing plants and outsourcing to China.
But, this is g.e., the red white and blue corporation that holds billions in government contracts and has a special seat at the lobbyist table, and a large piece of the media.

Advise to americans: remove head from sand and thumbs from butt

Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."

"As Lu Jinxiang, chief executive of Shenyang's controlling shareholder noted, 'This is just the beginning ... [the United States] is an ideal target.'"

Remember how the neo-conservatives of the Project For a New American Century that later infested the Bush-Cheney Junta publicly labeled China as an enemy at the end of their "Axis of Enemies" list? One slotted for "regime change?" The Chinese were smart enough to pay attention to those bloodthirsty fools and read their political game plan.

The Chinese have been around for thousands of years. They know a thing or two about civilization. They invented the magnetic compass, the first seismograph, gun powder, aerial reconnaissance (using giant kites), civil service exams, a national rice pension system that also helped provide coffins for the poor, the first true paper and printing press when European Caucasians were still running around naked in body paint chucking spears at each other and practicing incest as a cultural norm (see Tacitus).

There's no wonder they've let the Amurkan capitalists borrow enough rope plus interest to hang themselves with. There's no wonder they're gradually achieving parity with our ability to invade and commandeer globally linked computer networks that run electrical and other infrastructure. There's no wonder they are pushing to replace the U.S. dollar with a basket of international reserve currencies by 2018.

If our militarists paid more attention to Sun-Tzu or even Japan's Miyamoto Musashi they might even actually decisively win a war in less than 40 years.

But then, Amurka's not about decisively doing anything but idiotically transferring wealth to the richest one-tenth of primitive Amurkan plutocrats while wantonly destroying a commensurate amount of human potential. Our upper-class thinks it is consolidating global empire. In fact it is boxing itself and the rest of us into an evolutionary dead end.

In my work we use a lot of solar and wind turbines for power generation.

I hate to say it, but ALL the stuff we buy says "Made in China", and worse yet, it is good, reliable and robust product.

Germany lead the green bubble 15 years ago. The Chinese have copied it with their usual inscrutable pragmatism and patience. The narcissistic US still thinks Jimmy Carter was a wimp. What a lost opportunity.

And meanwhile, the morons in Congress argue over abortion and gay rights. One day this country will wake up and realize that these religious controversies have been the downfall of America.

This is one of the most incredible threads that CD has produced. CD needs to publish a Book of CommonThreads of CommonDreams.

As I read your reactions to RFKJr's data-filled article---indicating a lot of actual RESEARCH---I wanted to reply to so many of you. Too many of you.

RFKJr doesn't hate China. What he is saying is that they are doing things better than we are and we better get our act together. He is mirroring the "target" hypothesis and aiming at the biggest potential economic threat. Germany is also a far larger net exporter (of nonconsumer goods) than we are but it is intertwined in the Euro and China is bigger than Europe and so is India! Egad.

This is a very complex article. I need to return to it and your comments. Meanwhile, I would like to point out one thing that I have seen noone else notice or write about. One aspect of Wind Power---those big turbines so iconically displayed all these years on the hills of California---is that they actually contribute to a reduction in wind turbulence, which is a good thing given that one huge consequence of global warming is increased turbulence. They actually act to a certain degree as turbulence regulators. Sort of like the woodlands that still remain in the Hoosier National Forest. Cut down those trees and the Northeast United States will turn into Haiti! But don't tell Indiana GOP Governor Mitch Daniels about this. He'd sell it in a minute if it weren't NATIONAL forest. Thank gods.

***

Finally, anyone who messes with RFKJr messes with me even if he objects to what I am calling him. This man has engaged in just about as many controversial issues as did Ralph Nader in his day. At what point do we recognize the transcendant? And given the history who are we to judge how this extraordinary man "knows his place"? How do you or I know our place? By our own Acts.

We need to approach a tipping point on the alternative energy issue. We need to acknowledge the dinosaur nature of the carbon-energy system and turn ourselves around. The alternatives to this are Ecocide and Genocide. Empirically, the capacity is there. We just need to harness it.

Love to you all.

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(THIS post was intended as reply to metal.. oops)

Very astute observations of the reality of a civilization that spans millenia..!

The fact that a number of these posts, none as prescient as yours, perceive value in attacking RFK, the messenger, proves the point of how endemic the problems are here within the Amurkan psyche.

The one point missed that I'll make (for us all) is that just as America is wholly engaged in becoming a police state, the veneer of democracy now toxic-coated, our two worlds will fundamentally shift as the Chinese people will eventually come to know the illusion of freedom and "civil rights" just as we Amurkan's once had.

POLITICS ---- INTELLIGENCE CONTEST

You can always tell which paid actor will win the election,
the one mass media portrays as the most intelligent.

This is why the intelligent middleclass is so gullible
and easy to control, blinded by pride actually.

CAPITALISM ---- BRAIN-POWER DICTATORSHIP

Capitalism is a competition based dictatorship where the most intelligent
upper half divides all the wealth. So to accomplish this the lower half
must be kept insecure, anxiety driven and in fearful submission to
authority. Three examples:

(1) Absolutely nothing could have traumatizes us more than watching those
life action videos of JFK being wasted. Surely we who lived through it
will never forget the sight and the feel of it.

(2) For a great many the disaster on 9/11 was even worse.

(3) Disaster medicine from birth to the grave is by far the greatest tool for
keeping us insecure, anxiety driven and in fearful submission.

alabama_john writes:

"Capitalism is a competition based dictatorship where the most intelligent
upper half divides all the wealth. So to accomplish this the lower half
must be kept insecure, anxiety driven and in fearful submission to
authority."

There is no correlation between "intelligence" and acquisition of wealth. The reasons for financial "success" are complex almost beyond reckoning (except for inherited wealth and winning the lottery).

Anecdotally, I'm supposed to have a very high IQ, and when the Army gave me a battery of tests the proctor told me I tested above the design limits of the test, but I've been poor most of my life.

To suggest that the upper half on the wealth or income spectrum is somehow smarter than the lower half is truly absurd, ahistorical in the extreme, and, at best, implicitly elitist.

Finally, in recent human history, perhaps the most influential among us have been among the poorest. Jesus and Ghandi and Gautama come to mind. But I guess because they were poor, they must have been stupid.

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