The Crazy SOB Actually Did it!

[lester1/2jr]

why wasn't China a "tiger"?  Why were all the great kung fu movies made in Hong Kong, not China?
because there were no civil or economic rights in china at that time. movie content was regulated as was commerce. no funding and no artistic freedom if you had it. no entrenprenours = no art

[ralfy]

why wasn't China a "tiger"?  Why were all the great kung fu movies made in Hong Kong, not China?
because there were no civil or economic rights in china at that time. movie content was regulated as was commerce. no funding and no artistic freedom if you had it. no entrenprenours = no art

China isn't a "tiger" because that refers to the countries that developed a decade or two earlier:  HK, SG, SK, and TW. It's also not a "tiger cub" because that refers to countries that developed only last decade or so and continue to do so, like TH, MY, the PH, and ID. There are even countries that are growing at the same pace as these four but aren't seen as cubs, like VN.

Kung Fu movies don't determine that status but economic performance, e.g., per GDP growth rate. China's is one of the highest in the region: averaging more than 6 pct.

Neither do civil or economic rights. For example, JP, where the East Asian Miracle started, promoted targeted protectionism and import substitution, export orientation, and heavy coordination and regulation (especially via MITI). And even today it's still essentially run by a single political party. SK started industrializing because it had a military dictatorship that promoted similar, and so did TW, where martial law took place for almost four decades.

You'll see similar forms of authoritarianism in SG, MY, and ID. If you're looking for civil or economic rights similar to those of the West, then the go-to country is the Philippines, which even has a Constitution patterned after that of the U.S. Its ave. per capita growth rate? Less than 1.6 pct, one of the lowest among the tigers and cubs:

https://opinion.inquirer.net/148439/the-buwaya-problem

But why do you insist on discussing this point in this thread? I already explained these to you in the other. And so that we can remain on-topic, there's actually a connection between poor economic growth in the Philippines and what happened to Ukraine. I'll see if I can explain that in the future.

[ralfy]

"The Coming European Economic Apocalypse"

https://www.leftbrainwave.com/2022/11/the-coming-european-economic-apocalypse.html

In a nutshell: Europe needs what Russia has (and what China has). It cannot do without those things. But Russia (and China) can do without what Europe has. They are self-sufficient. The financial impact of European sanctions on Russia is minimal. Therefore, economic sanctions against Russia (or China) will never work. But, because of the overwhelming dependence of Europe on Russian (and Chinese) goods, sanctions on Russia (or China) will utterly destroy Europe. The only hope for Europe to prevent a total economic catastrophe is to achieve an agreement with Russia that ends the current destructive sanctions as soon as possible, and at whatever political cost, including the abandonment of Ukraine and cession of Ukrainian territory to Russia. The longer this is postponed, the more extensive the permanent economic damage to Europe will be.

My additional points:

More countries aren't listening to the U.S. and want to remain neutral and continue trading with both Ukraine and Russia.

Europe and Ukraine are likely being used as a shield by the U.S., i.e., where conflict can take place while the U.S. views it from afar, and as a sword, to keep poking at Russia and China to see if it will "do something."

This comes at no cost to the U.S. because as long as the dollar is needed by many countries then the U.S. can create debt continuously, and use that to fund military expansionism.

Some more benefits:

Proxy wars not only lead to no suffering for the U.S. but also scenarios where weapons can be tested.

They also allow the U.S. military and allies to exercise, making them more experienced compared to Russia and China.

They lead to more arms sales, which makes the arms dealers in both the U.S. and Russia happier. In fact, contradictions can even take place, which are acceptable because of realpolitik. For example, just as the U.S. profited by arming both Saudi Arabia and Israel, Israel also profits by continuing to trade with Russia while selling arms to Ukraine.

Finally, for those wondering how the U.S. government profits by giving military aid to other countries, here's how I think it works:

The U.S. government creates debt and then passes it on to the public or uses tax revenues, etc.. The funds are given as military aid to countries like Ukraine with strings attached (as expected). Corrupt Ukraine and U.S. politicians get their cuts, the money is used to buy expensive armaments from the U.S., which makes the defense industry happy. This also makes Ukraine more dependent on the U.S., which makes Wall Street, which invests in the defense industry and can profit from privatization in Ukraine and elsewhere, happier. Then Wall Street campaigns for U.S. politicians who will operate in their favor.

Which has been the case since the Reagan administration.

Finally, this is part of the two points that I've been raising all along: neoconservatism and neoliberalism. Use foreign policies and the military to make countries dependent on the U.S. through regime change, etc., and then exploit their resources.

[ralfy]

In relation to the previous post:

"'Not the progress I would have hoped for': Pentagon fails latest financial audit"

https://breakingdefense.com/2022/11/not-the-progress-i-would-have-hoped-for-pentagon-fails-latest-financial-audit/

The situation in Ukraine is providing a "teachable moment" for why it matters that the Defense Department accomplish a clean audit that establishes it has an accurate count of everything its purchased.

Of course, that's a minor issue. However, it reminds me of one thing Shirer pointed out in Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: one reason they were able to nail the Nazis was because the latter were meticulous recordkeepers.

[lester1/2jr]

why can't you just say that China didn't make any great kung fu movies(okay they made "Shaolin Temple" but only after a solid decade of Hong kong build up) because they were communist? I don't understand.

just admit it. they thought freedom of speech and markets were bad

[ER]

Dudes, I will hear zero arguments on this point: capitalist, communist, theocratic, socialist, imperialist, or otherwise, NOBODY does diphthongs like the Chinese. No, not a word in disagreement! Nobody out diphthongs the Chinese.

[lester1/2jr]

China isn't a "tiger" because that refers to the countries that developed a decade or two earlier

right. why didn't China develop when those other countries did is what i'm asking.


dont talk about what came before him or after him.

[ralfy]

why can't you just say that China didn't make any great kung fu movies(okay they made "Shaolin Temple" but only after a solid decade of Hong kong build up) because they were communist? I don't understand.

just admit it. they thought freedom of speech and markets were bad

Because kung fu movies have nothing to do with economic growth.

[ralfy]

China isn't a "tiger" because that refers to the countries that developed a decade or two earlier

right. why didn't China develop when those other countries did is what i'm asking.


dont talk about what came before him or after him.

China did not develop because it followed the wrong economic policies. After it followed the right ones from 1979 onward, then it experienced high economic growth: at least 6 pct ave. per annum, some say 7. That led to a drastic reduction in poverty by 2000, with around 800 million people achieving basic needs.

The other countries developed earlier because they followed the right economic policies, which involve variations of the East Asian Miracle: economic protectionism with import substitution, nationalization of key industries, heavy infrastructure development to act as an industrial base, export orientation, and coordination through mid-term economic planning and regulation.

Kung fu movies. Good grief.

[ralfy]

From last March:

"How NATO Lost Its Way"

https://compactmag.com/article/how-nato-lost-its-way

But the political inheritors of the anti-cruise campaigners are today all hot for NATO, which I am sure they would have despised in the old days when it preserved the freedom of Western Europe through masterly inaction. These enthusiasts, for instance, desire to impose no-fly zones on Ukraine, a policy guaranteed to spread bloody war even further over the continent of Europe. The successors of the left-wing academics who once apologized for the USSR are now severe enemies of non-Communist Russia. The herbivores of 1982 are the warmongers of 2022.

...

For historical reasons, thanks to where the Allied armies had ended up in 1945, NATO's most powerful military units, the American ones, were on the least likely line of Soviet attack, down south near the Fulda Gap. If the USSR's enormous Third Shock Army ever had been ordered to rumble westward across the Inner German Border, it would almost certainly have been the weaker, smaller British forces up in Lower Saxony which would have taken the first terrible blows. There were other weaknesses. After 40 years of alliance, NATO had done remarkably little to standardize its weapons and equipment. The joke (perhaps true) was that the only standard item of NATO equipment was the paper sick-bag issued to soldiers in transport aircraft. Britain had one sort of tank, the Americans another, the West Germans yet another. I once watched as Margaret Thatcher (all in white like a female Gandalf) held a shooting contest in Germany standing in the turret of a British Challenger, against the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, squeezed into a locally made Leopard.

In short, they're like U.S. liberal hawks of the 1960s, realizing that the "bleeding heart" view is a sign of weakness, and that that must be replaced by belligerence in the name of "freedom" and "democracy."

At that point, following Reagan, they eventually merged neoconservatism and neoliberalism into American exceptionalism. The difference is that they're the fodder.

[ralfy]

From a few days ago, and related:

"Which Countries Believe WWIII is Coming?"

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/which-countries-believe-wwiii-is-coming/

The Briefing

In every single country surveyed, the majority of respondents believed a world war
could break out in coming years

Australia was the most pessimistic, and Japan was the most optimistic

I won't be surprised if neocons try to spin this, too. It'll be like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[ralfy]

From last July:

"The Phoniest, Most PR-Intensive War Of All Time"

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-phoniest-most-pr-intensive-war

The president and first lady of Ukraine have posed for a romantic photoshoot with Vogue magazine, wherein President Volodymyr Zelensky waxes poetical about his love for his darling wife.

...

I mean this is after all the same Volodymyr Zelensky who has been so busy making video appearances for the Grammy Awards, the Cannes Film Festival, the World Economic Forum and probably the Bilderberg group as well, and having meetings with celebrities like Ben Stiller, Sean Penn, and Bono and the Edge from U2. It's as busy a PR tour as he could possibly have without having a discussion about the strategic importance of long-range artillery with Elmo on Sesame Street.

[Allhallowsday]

http://youtu.be/3rcxMDaDYL4

[indianasmith]

This thread has essentially devolved into a longwinded debate between Lester and Ralfy, and the rest of us quit caring a long time ago.
So I'm going to lock it, and you guys can debate the evils of communism versus the misdeeds of the USA via personal message from now till judgment day and the rest of us won't have to hear it!

[Rev. Powell]

But they had finally brought the discussion around to kung fu movies!