Winston Churchill is credited with saying “It’s better to jaw-jaw than war-war.” It is very much better indeed when two protagonists are armed with nuclear weapons, say like the U.S. and China. It was refreshing therefore to hear that the two great powers are going to do a lot more
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Views from the Beltline: The amazing American economy
Reading a very good book recently I was once again reminded of the irrepressible nature of the American economy. The book is Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller. It tells the story of that technological miracle that created the modern world—the silicon chip.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: China’s spending money to undermine Canadian democracy? If they’ll just leave us alone, we’ll take care of it ourselves!
If the People’s Republic of China is trying as hard as the Conservative Party of Canada insists it is to undermine Canadian democracy, it’s hard to understand why they’re bothering. Retired Canadian national security advisor Wesley Wark (Photo: Centre for International Governance Innovation). After all, if they’ll just leave us
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Iran and Saudi Arabia make nice
The Middle East has been an ugly place for some time. It has become humanity’s favourite region for killing each other although Vladimir Putin is attempting to return that honour to Europe. It was good news therefore to hear that two of the region’s major belligerents have decided to kiss
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Iran and Saudi Arabia make nice
The Middle East has been an ugly place for some time. It has become humanity’s favourite region for killing each other although Vladimir Putin is attempting to return that honour to Europe. It was good news therefore to hear that two of the region’s major belligerents have decided to kiss
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Plague Update: Logic Fails
There’s a cartoon showing how many people still think that COVID-19 is just like chicken pox, and you aren’t likely to get a symptomatic infection another time while healthy, so they magically think a COVID infection will build herd immunity and eventually end the disease. It’s going to be just
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Xi puts women in their place
When President Xi Jinping introduced his Politburo Standing Committee at the 20th Communist party congress in Beijing, one thing stood out. Of the seven, none were women. Furthermore, of the 24-member Politburo itself, for the first time in 25 years none were women. The Standing Committee is the small group
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Time to friend-shore?
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently introduced a concept she referred to as “friend-shoring.” In her words, “Friend-shoring is the idea that countries that espouse a common set of values on international trade … should trade and get the benefits of trade.” She added that the idea was to ensure
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: How fares the emperor?
Xi Jinping has it all: general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, chairman of the Central Military Commission, commander-in-chief of the People’s Liberation Army, and the Politburo Standing Committee filled with his own hand-picked loyalists. He is, in all but title, the emperor of China. For a dictator, this is
Continue readingRecreating Eden: When a Veil Is Not a Veil: Fashion, Modesty and Evolving Rules
Just as France begins to consider prohibiting women from wearing niqab, or a full veil, fashion designer Riccardo Tisci features a very attractive young woman wearing a sort of pseudo-veil in his new collection for Givenchy, seen at left as shown in The Globe and Mail. The juxtaposition throws a
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Nancy P’s Asian adventure
On first hearing about U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s planned visit to Taiwan it struck me as a rather, shall we say, stupid idea. It would infuriate the Chinese, who claim the island as part of China, and the Americans hardly need a fight with another nuclear power
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – David Adams examines the evidence that COVID-19 remains infectious far longer than assumed by politicized public health messaging. And Ted Raymond reports that Ottawa has already seen more COVID deaths in 2022 than in 2021, confirming that the end of public health protections
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Plague Update: Drugs and Tests
Are the Rapid A Tests much good for making social plans? Not definitively. Cases are going undetected by tests in many cases, giving false negatives that result in infectious people feeling confident to mingle with uninfected people. The leading anti-viral drug, Paxlovid, is being tested for use to fight symptoms
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Are liberal values failing?
A recent article in The New York Times by David Brooks, “Globalization Is Over. The Global Culture Wars Have Begun,” discusses the decline of globalization generally and Western values specifically around the world. I agree with much of what Brooks writes but found myself picking one nit. He states: “This
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – William Haseltine writes about the long-lasting and severe cognitive effects of long COVID, while Danny Altmann discusses the urgency of developing effective treatment given the reality that vaccines do little to prevent it. Katherine Wu warns that the U.S. is rapidly losing any
Continue readingNorthern Currents –: Don’t just blame the anti-vaxxers, blame our political elites too
Justin Trudeau has chosen to place all of the blame on the unvaccinated for the current spike in cases and hospitalizations. The problem is, this is only a half-truth. It is political scapegoating. The other half of the problem is Trudeau himself – and the rest of Canada’s political elites
Continue readingKersplebedeb: Free the Fujian Six! Open Letter from a Young Maoist Awaiting Prison [Chuang]
[This is translation was published to Chuangcn.org on January 10, 2022.] Just as 2022 began, the world received news that delivery worker and organizer Chen Guojiang, known as Mengzhu (??), had been freed after nearly a year in detention. But Mengzhu’s release by no means signified the loosening of control
Continue readingKersplebedeb: Every weakness is claimed as strength: Chuang’s ‘Social Contagion’ is critical proletarian research for our catastrophic present [Lausan.hk]
[This review of Chuang’s Social Contagion and Other Writings on Microbiological Class War in China (2021) originally appeared on Lausan.hk on November 4, 2021.] By JN A “SARS outbreak” on the mainland was first reported by media in Hong Kong on December 30, 2019. For those living in or involved
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: World’s top movie not what you might think
It may come as a surprise to Canadian film fans, but the top box office movie in 2021 is not James Bond’s No Time to Die or the legendary sci-fi Dune. It’s the Chinese blockbuster The Battle at Lake Changjin. It has some Hollywood elements, for instance heroic soldiers overcoming
Continue readingThings Are Good: Big Box Stores Remove Products Used to Violate Human Rights
Two of the largest retail chains in the United States have stopped the sale of Chinese-made surveillance products used by the Chinese government to violate human rights. This move to ban the sale of particular Chinese surveillance goods is a direct reaction to those companies benefiting from the ongoing Uyghur
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