on political satire...,
2005-07-13 21:01:26
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advice i wouldn't offer...,
2005-07-15 05:00:23
chinese firm's bid for US oil company:
didn't Jesse Helm's retire over two years ago? Oh, there's his heir, Walter Jones reading aloud from the Moonie Times...
On C-SPAN today there were congressional hearings, Armed Services Committee I think, on China and the proposed Unocal buyout. Watch [rm] and be amazed at how the GOP leaps to the defense of state intervention against the free market and the same corporatized free "trade" they unfailingly espouse! Watch and learn how China seeks possession of the "oil weapon"! How Chinese academics heinously accuse the US of persuing its security in the middle east! How Chinese academics heinously urge their government to *gasp* pursue it's own national security! Watch and learn how US congressmen and officials support China's Most Favored Nation status but have absolutely nothing to say about the trade deficit until later, when it's depicted as a weapon to be used against the US! Watch and learn how Republican congressmen support China's MFN status yet raise hysterical alarms about some indeterminate Chinese threat! Watch and learn how US congressmen and officials support China's MFN status yet raise hysteria over the tyrannical and totalitarian nature of China's government! Watch and learn how they will undermine it's totalitarian nature not by mandating rising working conditions for Chinese labor utilized by US firms but by preventing the sale of a small oil company to the Chinese government! Watch and learn absolutely nothing about why Taiwan might be a concern of ours!
Watch and learn of Chinese discussions! Discussions! Discussions with oil producing nations! Watch and do not discover any evidence of Chinese aggression! Watch and do not learn about how China might have cause for concern about the perpetual wartime footing of the American military machine that has encircled their very own country!
Watch and learn of wild rumors that China has acquired US military technology from US corporations! Do not learn whether US corporations might be held accountable for illegal transfers of military technology to a totalitarian regime held under arms transfer restrictions per the US arms embargo! Watch America's good friend James Woolsey discuss the theories of Sun Tzu in a detailed and complex analysis wherein our 100+ billion invested in China and China's 5+ billion invested here and their attempted acquisition of further US investments by buying Unocal demonstrates how China "hypocritically restricts" foreign investment! Watch him, furthermore, get childishly pissy about it! Above all, watch and enjoy establishment figures and high public officials discuss the overarching, essential, strategic importance of oil, that which we are not in Iraq for!
Jerry Taylor of the CATO Institute is, sadly, the closest thing to a lone voice of anything resembling reason regarding the subject of the Chinese threat but nevertheless treated oil markets as though they weren't just government granted monopolies, making him just another side of an insane coin. Sanity would have been well served were there somebody on the panel, on either side, that had shared any real knowledge about China. There was none to be demonstrated.
I mean, go ahead and don't allow them to buy Unocal, I haven't seen any reason to care one way or the other, the oil bears will eventually be proven right and any country still going long is going to be short on energy. But fuckssake, instead of making jackasses of themselves and their country in a public hearing they could at least try to carry the discussion with the slightest modicum of respect or decorum.
update: Towards the end Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC) is actually able to name an example of Chinese aggression that is valid cause for worry if this is how this discussion is going to develop: the Boxer motherfucking Rebellion! OMFG, what a fool I've been! How could we forget!? How? Have you forgotten the motherfucking Boxer Rebellion? What kind of American are you anyway?
