China Bans Internet News Reporting as Media Crackdown Widens

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China’s top internet regulator ordered major online companies including Sina Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. to stop original news reporting, the latest effort by the government to tighten its grip over the country’s web and information industries.

The Cyberspace Administration of China imposed the ban on several major news portals, including Sohu.com Inc. and NetEase Inc., Chinese media reported in identically worded articles citing an unidentified official from the agency’s Beijing office. The companies have “seriously violated” internet regulations by carrying plenty of news content obtained through original reporting, causing “huge negative effects,” according to a report that appeared in The Paper on Sunday.

The agency instructed the operators of mobile and online news services to dismantle “current-affairs news” operations on Friday, after earlier calling a halt to such activity at Tencent, according to people familiar with the situation. Like its peers, Asia’s largest internet company had developed a news operation and grown its team. Henceforth, they and other services can only carry reports provided by government-controlled print or online media, the people said, asking not to be identified because the issue is politically sensitive.

The sweeping ban gives authorities near-absolute control over online news and political discourse, in keeping with a broader crackdown on information increasingly distributed over the web and mobile devices. President Xi Jinping has stressed that Chinese media must serve the interests of the ruling Communist Party.

The party has long been sensitive to the potential for negative reporting to stir up unrest, the greatest threat to its decades-old hold on power. Regulations forbidding enterprise reporting have been in place for years without consistent enforcement, but the latest ordinance suggests “they really mean business,” said Willy Lam, an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Center for China Studies. 

Xi’s ‘Crusade’

Xi is cementing his power base and silencing dissenters ahead of a twice-a-decade reshuffle at next year’s party congress. Lam said that he "is really tightening up his crusade to silence opponents in the media."

The regulator will slap financial penalties on sites found in violation of the regulations, the Paper cited the official as saying. A representative of Sohu declined to comment on the report. Tencent, Sina and NetEase didn’t respond to messages and phone calls seeking comment. The cyberspace administration has yet to respond to a faxed request for comment.

The government is now considering ways to exert a more direct form of influence over the country’s online media institutions. In recent months, Chinese authorities have held discussions with internet providers on a pilot project intended to pave the way for the government to start taking board seats and stakes of at least 1 percent in those companies. In return, they would get a license to provide news on a daily basis.

Gray Area

China’s online giants serve content, games and news to hundreds of millions of people across the country -- Tencent’s QQ and WeChat alone host more than a billion users, combined. Online news services however have always operated in a regulatory gray area. They’re not authorized to provide original content and technically aren’t allowed to hire reporters or editors. Still, outlets have recently published investigative stories on official corruption cases, and covered sensitive social issues from demonstrations to human rights. For instance, NetEase ran a feature in April after the party announced an investigation into a senior Hebei provincial official, Zhang Yue. The story was later removed from the internet.

For a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis of the latest media crackdown, click here.

“Current-affairs news” is a broad term in China and encompasses all news and commentary related to politics, economics, military, foreign affairs and social issues, according to the draft version of China’s online information law. The amended draft of the regulation is currently seeking public feedback on the CAC’s official website.

The change in the guidelines on original reporting also comes weeks after China replaced its chief internet regulator. Xu Lin, a former Shanghai propaganda chief who worked briefly with Xi during his half-year stint as Shanghai party boss in 2007, succeeded Lu Wei in June as head of the cyberspace administration. 

The regulator has since tightened its grip on online news reports, such as bywarning news or social network websites against publishing news without proper verification. In another sign that the government is exerting influence over information, the publishers of a private purchasing managers index suspended that popular gauge without explanation.

— With assistance by Keith Zhai

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COMMENTS

China builds world’s fastest supercomputer without U.S. chips

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China on Monday revealed its latest supercomputer, a monolithic system with 10.65 million compute cores built entirely with Chinese microprocessors. This follows a U.S. government decision last year to deny China access to Intel's fastest microprocessors.

There is no U.S.-made system that comes close to the performance of China's new system, the Sunway TaihuLight. Its theoretical peak performance is 124.5 petaflops, according to the latest biannual release today of the world's Top500supercomputers. It is the first system to exceed 100 petaflops. A petaflop equals one thousand trillion (one quadrillion) sustained floating-point operations per second.

The most important thing about Sunway TaihuLight may be its microprocessors. In the past, China has relied heavily on U.S. microprocessors in building its supercomputing capacity. The world's next fastest system, China's Tianhe-2, which has a peak performance of 54.9 petaflops, uses Intel Xeon processors.

TaihuLight, which is installed at China'sNational Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, uses ShenWei CPUs developed by Jiangnan Computing Research Lab in Wuxi. The operating system is a Linux-based Chinese system called Sunway Raise.

The TaihuLight is "very impressive," said Jack Dongarra, a professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee and one of the academic leaders of the Top500 supercomputing list, in a report about the new system.

TaihuLight is running "sizeable applications," which include advanced manufacturing, earth systems modeling, life science and big data applications, said Dongarra. This "shows that the system is capable of running real applications and [is] not just a stunt machine," Dongarra said.

It has been long known that China was developing a 100-plus petaflop system, and it was believed that China would turn to U.S. chip technology to reach this performance level. But just over a year ago, in a surprising move, the U.S. banned Intel from supplying Xeon chips to four of China's top supercomputing research centers.

The U.S. initiated this ban because China, it claimed, was using its Tianhe-2 system for nuclear explosive testing activities. The U.S. stopped live nuclear testing in 1992 and now relies on computer simulations. Critics in China suspected the U.S. was acting to slow that nation's supercomputing development efforts.

Four months after the Intel ban, in July 2015, the White House issued an executive order creating a "national strategic computing initiative" with the goal of maintaining an "economic leadership position" in high-performance computing research.

The U.S. order seemed late. China has been steadily building its supercomputing capacity, which included efforts to develop its own microprocessors. It produced a relatively small supercomputer in 2011 that relied on homegrown processors, but its big systems continued to rely on U.S. processors.

There has been nothing secretive about China's intentions. Researchers and analysts have been warning all alongthat U.S. exascale (an exascale is 1,000 petaflops) development, supercomputing's next big milestone, was lagging.

It's not just China that is racing ahead. Japan and Russia have their own development efforts. Europe is building supercomputers using ARM processors, and, similar to China, wants to decrease its dependency on U.S.-made chips.

China's government last week said it plans to build an exascale system by 2020. The U.S. has targeted 2023.

China now has more supercomputers in the Top500 list than the U.S., said Dongarra. "China has 167 systems on the June 2016 Top500 list compared to 165 systems in the U.S," he said, in an email. Ten years ago, China had 10 systems on the list.

Of all the supercomputers represented on the global list, the sum of the China supercomputers performance (211 petaflops) has exceeded the performance of the supercomputers in the U.S., (173 petaflops) represented on this list. The list doesn't represent the universe of all supercomputers in the U.S. None of the supercomputers used by intelligence agencies, for instance, are represented on this list.

"This is the first time the U.S. has lost the lead," said Dongarra, in the total number of systems on the Top500 list.

China's work is also winning global peer recognition. It's work on TaihuLight has resulted in three submissions selected as finalists for supercomputing's prestigious Gordon Bell Award, named for a pioneer in high-performance computing.

The fastest U.S. supercomputer, number 3 on the Top500 list, is the Titan, a Cray supercomputer at U.S. Dept. of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory with a theoretical peak of about 27 petaflops.

Whether the U.S. chip ban accelerated China's resolve to develop its own microprocessor technology is a question certain to get debate. But what is clear is China's longstanding goal to end reliance on U.S. technology.

"The Chinese were already determined over time to move to an indigenous processor," said Steve Conway, a high performance computing analyst at IDC. "I think the ban accelerates that -- it increases that determination," he said.

HPC has become increasingly important in the economy. Once primarily the domain of big science research, national security and high-end manufacturing such as airplane design, HPC's virtualization and big data analysis capabilities have made it critical in almost every industry. Manufacturers of all sizes, increasingly, are using supercomputers to design products virtually instead of building prototypes. Supercomputer are also used in applications such as fraud detection and big data analysis.

HPC has is now "so strategic that you really don't want to rely on foreign sources for it," said Conway.

COMMENTS

After Taxpayer Bailout, General Motors Plans Rollout Of Chinese-Built Buicks In America

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by DUSTIN STOCKTON29 Mar 2016127

In 2016, General Motors will roll out for the first time in the United States a new model of Buick built exclusively in China: the Buick Envision.

It’s the first time the iconic American auto manufacturer will sell cars built in China in the United States since receiving a sizable taxpayer-funded bailout at the end of the George W. Bush administration and beginning of the Barack Obama administration.

The Buick Envision–which was available in China for purchase as far back as 2014–will make its official debut in the United States in the summer of 2016.

The Buick Envision bills itself “a luxury crossover designed to turn heads and welcome you in.”

A quick search of “Buick Envision” leads to the Buick Envision’s website where one can explore all the features and design of the vehicle. The website doesn’t appear to make any reference to the fact that the Envision is manufactured in China.

The issue of U.S. auto manufacturers moving production facilities overseas has taken a center stage this presidential election, with the rise of both billionaire Donald Trump in the Republican Party and of 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

16%

 of Vermont in the Democratic Party.

Trump has drawn attention to GM competitor Ford for the company’s decision to move manufacturing to Mexico, but Ford wasn’t the recipient of a taxpayer-funded bailout. Sanders, meanwhile, has used his opposition to the bailouts to show that he isn’t influenced by crony capitalism–all while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has tried to take credit for saving the auto industry with her support of the bailout.

Breitbart News reached out to American Jobs Alliance to get its reaction to GM’s decision to import Chinese-produced cars. “When the taxpayers bailed out General Motors, we were told it was all about saving jobs in America. Now GM turns around and throws Americans under the wheels of Buicks made in China. Where does it stop? Will General Motors build Cadillacs, Chevys and GMC trucks in China next?” Curtis Ellis executive director American Jobs Alliance told Breitbart News.

General Motors has also announced plans to sell a Chinese manufactured hybrid Cadillac, the CT6 in American markets.

“Flint was known for decades as Buick City. It’s now jobless, bankrupt and destitute,” Ellis continued.

That’s inevitable if America is stripped of jobs and industry. 

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

56%

, 

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

44%

 and Barack Obama promise more of the same with the TransPacific Partnership, another globalist trade deal like the ones that destroyed Flint and thousands of communities across America. This must stop. We must put America and Americans first again. What’s good for GM should be good for America, not China.

Rick Manning, President of Americans for Limited Government, blasted GM’s decision in a statement to Breitbart News.

When the Bush Administration bailed out GM there was an implicit agreement that they would build cars here.  GM’s decision to manufacture vehicles in China was an insult, but it takes real chutzpah to import those very cars to compete against American made autos that don’t necessarily have a US companies nameplate. This is an inexcusable slap in the face of American workers and taxpayers. And people wonder why blue-collar workers support Trump?

Read More Stories About:

Big Government, 2016 Presidential Race

TRUMP SHAKES UP NEW WORLD ORDER

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Mon Mar 7, 2016 | 2:41 PM EST

Foreign diplomats voicing alarm to U.S. officials about Trump

By Mark Hosenball, Arshad Mohammed and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Foreign diplomats are expressing alarm to U.S. government officials about what they say are inflammatory and insulting public statements by Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, according to senior U.S. officials.

Officials from Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia have complained in recent private conversations, mostly about the xenophobic nature of Trump's statements, said three U.S. officials, who all declined to be identified.

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"As the (Trump) rhetoric has continued, and in some cases amped up, so, too, have concerns by certain leaders around the world," said one of the officials.

The three officials declined to disclose a full list of countries whose diplomats have complained, but two said they included at least India, South Korea, Japan and Mexico.

U.S. officials said it was highly unusual for foreign diplomats to express concern, even privately, about candidates in the midst of a presidential campaign. U.S. allies in particular usually don't want to be seen as meddling in domestic politics, mindful that they will have to work with whoever wins.

Senior leaders in several countries -- including Britain, Mexico, France, and Canada -- have already made public comments criticizing Trump's positions. German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel branded him a threat to peace and prosperity in an interview published on Sunday.

Trump's campaign did not respond to requests for comment on the private diplomatic complaints.

READ MORE: Hulk Hogan takes on Gawker in Florida sex tape trial

Japan's embassy declined to comment. The Indian and South Korean embassies did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for the Mexican government would not confirm any private complaints but noted that its top diplomat, Claudia Ruiz Massieu, said last week that Trump's policies and comments were "ignorant and racist" and that his plan to build a border wall to stop illegal immigration was "absurd."

The foreign officials have been particularly disturbed by the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim themes that the billionaire real estate mogul has pushed, according to the U.S. officials.

European and Middle Eastern government representatives have expressed dismay to U.S. officials about anti-Muslim declarations by Trump that they say are being used in recruiting pitches by the Islamic State and other violent jihadist groups.

On Dec. 7, Trump’s campaign issued a written statement saying that he was “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.”

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Trump subsequently said in television interviews that American Muslims traveling abroad would be allowed to return to the country, as would Muslim members of the U.S. military or Muslim athletes coming to compete in the United States.

There are also concerns abroad that the United States would become more insular under Trump, who has pledged to tear up international trade agreements and push allies to take a bigger role in tackling Middle East conflicts.

“European diplomats are constantly asking about Trump's rise with disbelief and, now, growing panic," said a senior NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"With the EU facing an existential crisis, there's more than the usual anxiety about the U.S. turning inward when Europe needs U.S. support more than ever."

Another of the senior U.S. officials said the complaints are coming mostly from mid-to-low ranking diplomats – described as “working level” - rather than from the most senior officials.

"The responses have ranged from amusement to befuddlement to curiosity," the official said. "In some cases, we've heard expressions of alarm, but those have been more in response to the anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment as well as the general sense of xenophobia.”

More than a hundred Republican foreign policy veterans pledged this week to oppose Trump, saying in an open letter that his proposals would undermine U.S. security.

"A LOT OF QUESTIONS"

On Tuesday, General Philip Breedlove, the United States' top military commander in Europe, said that the U.S. elections were stirring concerns among America's allies.

“I get a lot of questions from our European counterparts on our election process this time in general," said Breedlove, who did not mention Trump by name. "And I think they see a very different sort of public discussion than they have in the past

China Warns U.S. After Trump Wins Nevada Caucus

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Chinese Communist Party leaders stand up while the international communist anthem is played. / AP

BY: Bill Gertz Follow @BillGertzFebruary 24, 2016 5:00 pm

China warned the United States on Wednesday not to adopt punitive currency policies that could disrupt U.S.-China relations after Donald Trump’s win in the Nevada caucus.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing that “we are following with interest the U.S. presidential election.”

Hua was asked about China’s response to a possible Trump presidency and his announced plan to punish China for currency manipulation with a tax on Chinese goods.

“Since it belongs to the domestic affair of the U.S., I am not going to make comments on specific remarks by the relevant candidate,” she said.

“But I want to stress that China and the U.S., as world’s largest developing and developed countries, shoulder major responsibilities in safeguarding world peace, stability and security and driving world development,” the spokeswoman added.

“The sustained, sound and steady growth of China-U.S. relations serves the fundamental and long-term interests of the two countries and benefits the world. We hope and believe that the U.S. government will pursue a positive policy toward China in a responsible manner.”

The comments came as Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, is holding talks in Washington that include U.S. concerns about a Chinese military buildup on disputed islands in the South China Sea, and cooperation on dealing with North Korea’s nuclear and missile provocations.

Hua said Wang and Secretary of State John Kerry agreed the two sides will enhance cooperation and increase talks and exchanges.

“We stand ready to preserve and advance China-U.S. relations together with the U.S. side,” she said.

Kerry said he spoke to Wang about reducing tensions and finding diplomatic solutions to competing South China Sea claims.

“We want there to be a halt to the expansion and militarization of occupied features,” Kerry said. “Everyone benefits by true demilitarization, non-militarization.”

Kerry also said the United States remains committed to freedom of navigation and overflight, “something which China says it does not stand in the way of; it agrees that there should be peaceful freedom of navigation.”

Reports from Asia say Chinese state-run media have been ordered by the Communist Party to minimize reporting on the U.S. presidential election.

Hong Kong’s Chinese-language news outlet Oriental Daily reported Feb. 5 that the Party’s Propaganda Department, which sets policies for all state-run media, ordered all publications to ban election coverage of U.S. policies toward China and to focus election coverage on negative stories and scandals.

Trump won the Nevada caucus with 45 percent of the vote, increasing his chances of winning the Republican nomination later this year.

Last month, Trump vowed to impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese good to offset China’s devaluation of the yuan.

“They’re devaluing their currency, and they’re killing our companies,” Trump said. “We are letting them get away with it, and we can’t let them get away with it.”

The Obama administration has adopted conciliatory policies toward China on trade and currency issues.

Trump, on his campaign website, outlined a hardline approach to dealing with China that involves officially declaring China a currency manipulator and negotiating an end to the practice.

Trump also wants to thwart China’s theft of intellectual property and adopt policies aimed at bring jobs back from overseas to the United States.

Bolstering the U.S. military and “deploying it appropriately in the East and South China Seas” are other goals.

“These actions will discourage Chinese adventurism that imperils American interests in Asia and shows our strength as we begin renegotiating our trading relationship with China,” the Trump website states. “A strong military presence will be a clear signal to China and other nations in Asia and around the world that America is back in the global leadership business.”

COMMENTS

George Soros Sees Crisis in Global Markets That Echoes 2008

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Global markets are facing a crisis and investors need to be very cautious, billionaire George Soros told an economic forum in Sri Lanka on Thursday.

China is struggling to find a new growth model and its currency devaluation is transferring problems to the rest of the world, Soros said in Colombo. A return to positive interest rates is a challenge for the developing world, he said, adding that the current environment has similarities to 2008.

Global currency, stock and commodity markets are under fire in the first week of the new year, with a sinking yuan adding to concern about the strength of China’s economy as it shifts away from investment and manufacturing toward consumption and services. Almost $2.5 trillion was wiped from the value of global equities this year through Wednesday, and losses deepened in Asia on Thursday as a plunge in Chinese equities halted trade for the rest of the day.

“China has a major adjustment problem,” Soros said. “I would say it amounts to a crisis. When I look at the financial markets there is a serious challenge which reminds me of the crisis we had in 2008.”

Soros has warned of a 2008-like catastrophe before. On a panel in Washington in September 2011, he said the Greece-born European debt crunch was “more serious than the crisis of 2008.”

Soros, whose hedge-fund firm gained about 20 percent a year on average from 1969 to 2011, has a net worth of about $27.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He began his career in New York City in the 1950s and gained a reputation for his investing prowess in 1992 by netting $1 billion with a bet that the U.K. would be forced to devalue the pound.

Measures of volatility are surging this year. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, known as the fear gauge or the VIX, is up 13 percent. The Nikkei Stock Average Volatility Index, which measures the cost of protection on Japanese shares, has climbed 43 percent in 2016 and a Merrill Lynch index of anticipated price swings in Treasury bonds rose 5.7 percent.

China’s Communist Party has pledged to increase the yuan’s convertibility by 2020 and to gradually dismantle capital controls. Weakness in the world’s second-largest economy remains even after the People’s Bank of China has cut interest rates to record lows and authorities pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy. Data this week reinforced a sluggish manufacturing sector.

COMMENTS

Countries Rush for Upper Hand in Antarctica

www.nytimes.com

By SIMON ROMERO

Photographs by DANIEL BEREHULAK

On a glacier-filled island with fjords and elephant seals, Russia has built Antarctica’s first Orthodox church on a hill overlooking its research base, transporting the logs all the way from Siberia.

Less than an hour away by snowmobile, Chinese laborers have updated the Great Wall Station, a linchpin in China’s plan to operate five bases on Antarctica, complete with an indoor badminton court, domes to protect satellite stations and sleeping quarters for 150 people.

Not to be outdone, India’s futuristic new Bharathi base, built on stilts using 134 interlocking shipping containers, resembles a spaceship. Turkey and Iran have announced plans to build bases, too.

More than a century has passed since explorers raced to plant their flags at the bottom of the world, and for decades to come this continent is supposed to be protected as a scientific preserve, shielded from intrusions like military activities and mining.

But an array of countries are rushing to assert greater influence here, with an eye not just toward the day those protective treaties expire, but also for the strategic and commercial opportunities that exist right now.

“The newer players are stepping into what they view as a treasure house of resources,” said Anne-Marie Brady, a scholar at New Zealand’s University of Canterbury who specializes in Antarctic politics.

Some of the ventures focus on the Antarctic resources that are already up for grabs, like abundant sea life. China and South Korea, both of which operate state-of-the-art bases here, are ramping up their fishing of krill, the shrimplike crustaceans found in abundance in the Southern Ocean, while Russia recently thwartedefforts to create one of the world’s largest ocean sanctuaries here.

Some scientists are examining the potential for harvesting icebergs from Antarctica, which is estimated to have the biggest reserves of fresh water on the planet. Nations are also pressing ahead with space research and satellite projects to expand their global navigation abilities.

Building on a Soviet-era foothold, Russia is expanding its monitoring stations for Glonass, its version of the Global Positioning System. At least three Russian stations are already operating in Antarctica, part of its effort to challenge the dominance of the American GPS, and new stations are planned for sites like the Russian base, in the shadow of the Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity.

Elsewhere in Antarctica, Russian researchers boast of their recentdiscovery of a freshwater reserve the size of Lake Ontario after drilling through miles of solid ice.

“You can see that we’re here to stay,” said Vladimir Cheberdak, 57, chief of the Bellingshausen Station, as he sipped tea under a portrait of Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, an officer and later admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy who explored the Antarctic coast in 1820.

Antarctica’s mineral, oil and gas wealth are a longer-term prize. The treaty banning mining here, shielding coveted reserves of iron ore, coal and chromium, expires in 2048. Researchers recently found kimberlite deposits hinting at the existence of diamonds. And while assessments vary widely, geologistsestimate that Antarctica holds at least 36 billion barrels of oil and natural gas.

Beyond the Antarctic treaties, huge obstacles persist to tapping these resources, like drifting icebergs that could imperil offshore platforms. Then there is Antarctica’s remoteness, with some mineral deposits found in windswept locations on a continent that is larger than Europe and where winter temperatures hover around minus 70 Fahrenheit.

But advances in technology might make Antarctica a lot more accessible three decades from now. And even before then, scholars warn, the demand for resources in an energy-hungry world could raise pressure to renegotiate Antarctica’s treaties, possibly allowing more commercial endeavors here well before the prohibitions against them expire.

The research stations on King George Island offer a glimpse into the long game on this ice-blanketed continent as nations assert themselves, eroding the sway long held by countries like the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Being stationed in Antarctica involves adapting to life on the planet’s driest, windiest and coldest continent, yet each nation manages to make itself at home.

Bearded Russian priests offer regular services at the Orthodox church for the 16 or so Russian speakers who spend the winter at the base, largely polar scientists in fields like glaciology and meteorology. Their number climbs to about 40 in the warmer summer months.

Inside the Bellingshausen base, satellites beam Russian television directly to flat screens on the wall. Researchers disappear for hours into a library with science fiction and detective novels. Others seek refuge in Bellingshausen’s banya, or sauna, where they unwind while sipping their ration of a couple of beers a week. Authentic flourishes include a broom of birch branches with which researchers can gently whip themselves.

“We sacrifice some of the nice things in life to go to Antarctica,” said Oleg Katorgin, 45, a construction supervisor who spent much of the past year at Bellingshausen. To help the time pass, he paints murals of idyllic tropical beach scenes, with mermaids. His paintings hang on the walls of the billiards room at Bellingshausen and a recreation area at an adjacent Chilean base overlooking Maxwell Bay.

China has arguably the fastest-growing operations in Antarctica. It opened its fourth station last year and is pressing ahead with plans to build a fifth. It is building its second icebreaking ship and setting up research drilling operations on an ice dome 13,422 feet above sea level that is one of the planet’s coldest places.

Chinese officials say the expansion in Antarctica prioritizes scientific research, but they also acknowledge that concerns about “resource security” influence their moves.

China’s newly renovated Great Wall station on King George Island makes the Russian and Chilean bases here seem antiquated.

“We do weather monitoring here and other research,” Ning Xu, 53, the chief of the Chinese base, said over tea during a fierce blizzard in late November.

The cavernous base he leads resembles a snowed-in college campus on holiday break, with the capacity to sleep more than 10 times the 13 people who were staying on through the Antarctic winter.

Yong Yu, a Chinese microbiologist, showed off the spacious building, with empty desks under an illustrated timeline detailing the rapid growth of China’s Antarctic operations since the 1980s. “We now feel equipped to grow,” he said.

As some countries expand operations in Antarctica, the United States maintains three year-round stations on the continent with more than 1,000 people during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, including those at the Amundsen-Scott station, built in 1956 at an elevation of 9,301 feet on a plateau at the South Pole. But American researchers quietly grumble about budget restraints and having far fewericebreakers than Russia, limiting the reach of the United States in Antarctica.

Scholars warn that Antarctica’s political flux could blur the distinction between military and civilian activities long before the continent’s treaties come up for renegotiation, especially in parts of Antarctica that are ideal for intercepting signals from satellites or retasking satellite systems, potentially enhancing global electronic intelligence operations.

Some countries have had a hard time here. Brazil opened a research station in 1984, but it was largely destroyed by a firethat killed two members of the navy in 2012, the same year that a diesel-laden Brazilian barge sank near the base. As if that were not enough, a Brazilian C-130 Hercules military transport plane has remained stranded near the runway of Chile’s air base here since it crash-landedin 2014.

Still, Brazil’s stretch of misfortune has created opportunities for China, with a Chinese company winning the $100 million contract in 2015 to rebuild the Brazilian station.

Amid all the changes, Antarctica maintains its allure. South Korea opened its second Antarctic research base in 2014, describing it as a way to test robots developed by Korean researchers for use in extreme conditions. With Russia’s help, Belarus is preparing to build its firstAntarctic base. Colombia said this year that it planned to join other South American nations with bases in Antarctica.

“The old days of the Antarctic being dominated by the interests and wishes of white men from European, Australasian and North American states is over,” said Klaus Dodds, a politics scholar at the University of London who specializes in Antarctica. “The reality is that Antarctica is geopolitically contested.”

Coming to America? China Introduces ‘Credit Score’ For Obedient Citizens

www.infowars.com

China’s largest social networks have partnered with the country’s Communist government to create a credit score system that will measure how obedient its citizens are, a chilling prospect that could one day arrive in America if social justice warriors get their way.

Entitled ‘Sesame Credit’, the program, “Aims to create a docile, compliant citizenry who are fiscally and morally responsible by employing a game-like format to create self-imposed, group social control. In other words, China gamified peer pressure to control its citizenry; and, though the scheme hasn’t been fully implemented yet, it’s already working — insidiously well,” reports Zero Hedge.

Sesame Credit is operated by Alibaba and Tencent, two companies that run all the top social networks in China, including Weibo, which has over 200 million users. It works by measuring not only purchase and bill paying history but also “political compliance.”

“Among the things that will hurt a citizen’s score are posting political opinions without prior permission, or posting information that the regime does not like, such as about the Tiananmen Square massacre that the government carried out to hold on to power, or the Shanghai stock market collapse. It will hurt your score not only if you do these things, but if any of your friends do them,” warns the ACLU.

In other words, people will face the threat of not only becoming a target of state surveillance, but also losing their friends if they express political views frowned upon by the state. This social pressure would obviously make individuals far less likely to criticize the government or to counter a dominant social narrative. The credit scores can also be seen by anyone, adding the further burden of potential public shaming for controversial opinions.

The idea is ripped straight from the script of The Prisoner – a cult 1960’s TV show in which the authorities in control of ‘The Village’ attempt to break Number 6 and strip him of his individuality. In one episode, Number 6 is declared “unmutual” and faces ostracization from the rest of the community.

Rick Falkvinge compared this new method of molding the ‘good citizen’ to how the KGB and the Stasi would neutralize dissent.

“The KGB and the Stasi’s method of preventing dissent from taking hold was to plant so-called agents provocateurs in the general population, people who tried to make people agree with dissent, but who actually were arresting them as soon as they agreed with such dissent, he writes. “As a result, nobody would dare agree that the government did anything bad, and this was very effective in preventing any large-scale resistance from taking hold. The Chinese way here is much more subtle, but probably more effective still.”

Johan Lagerkvist also warns that the program will scrutinize what books people read, labeling it akin to “Amazon’s consumer tracking with an Orwellian political twist.”

Sesame Credit is currently opt-in only but is set to become mandatory by 2020.

Could such a system ever take off in America? For years, the Obama White House has been pushing cybersecurity initiatives that would mandate de facto government permission to use the Internet. Since web access would be linked with an individual user’s identify, it could easily be restricted if that individual dares to dissent against the state.

A credit score for expressing politically correct opinions also sounds like a utopian wet dream for social justice warriors, who utilize the power of mob outrage to pester governments and corporations into publicly shaming people who challenge their narratives.

Indeed, prominent feminists are alreadycalling on the United Nations to pressure ISPs and governments to cut off web access for those who dare to disagree with feminists and leftists online.

If the we continue to treat the feelings of perpetually offended outrage mobs with more importance than free speech – particularly controversial and unpopular free speech – there’ll be no need for governments to impose a social credit score to control citizens – we’re already imposing it on ourselves by default.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.

Capitalism Saves and is responsible for American Greatness.

CAPITALISM SAVES

It is one of the greatest gifts God has given America and is completely responsible for American Greatness. Capitalism = Freedom = Responsibility = Happiness. 

    Communism, Socialism, Dictatorships and any other suppressive type of government have been directly and indirectly responsible for well over 100,000,000 million murders, deaths and atrocities beyond comprehension in the last 100 years all during "Peace Time".  Compare that to Zero for American Capitalist.  The more responsible you are for yourself the better Capitalism works.  The less responsible you are for yourself the better communism works. 

 

 

Union organizer Andy Stern uses Marxist language to promote his agenda.

FULL ARTICLE 

Posted by Jay Moody at December 27, 2011

Categories: Political, Philosophy and Theory, Uncategorized, Books
Tags: capitalism Marx Marxism Political socialism communism economics

  

Violent Revolution

The ultimate goal of Marxism is violent communist revolution.  The first goal of the proletariat is to stage a successful revolution in their own countries, and then unite throughout the world in order to create a communist world order.  Marx explained that the score can only be settled when “that war breaks out into open revolution and where that violent  overthrow or the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat ” (p 77).  To accomplish this, the proletariat must first organize themselves into a class and “wrest all capital, by degrees, from the bourgeoisie,” and “centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state” (p 93, emphasis added).

Statism

In order to support and maintain this statism, Marx planned to destroy the family by replacing home education with social education (p 89), and abolishing all personal property and inheritance.  He also planned to abolish countries,  nationality and all “eternal truths,” all religion, and all morality including Freedom and Justice (p 92, emphasis added).  In order to accomplish this goal: “Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things” (p 116).

Conclusion

This is Marxism at its core: class warfare based on the politics of envy.  It looks toward an omnipotent state to manage the affairs of the people.  Marxism’s long-term goal is global communism, and the abolition of national identity.  It is anti-freedom and scoffs at ideas like justice, and  morality.  It views technological advancement as a detriment to society and ignores any concept of personal responsibility for the proletariat. This ideology is covertly and sometimes naively promoted under various liberal pseudonyms, often uncited in order to avoid the stigma of the word “Marxist.”  It is quite possibly the most dangerous philosophy at work in society today, especially for people who value freedom, independence, and justice.

The Communist Manifesto ends with these words: “Working men of all countries unite!”

Posted by Jay Moody at December 27, 2011
Categories: Political, Philosophy and Theory, Uncategorized, Books
Tags: capitalism Marx Marxism Political socialism communism economics

Capitalist Pig 

Good Luck With Communism New York !!!

Communism is responsible for the violent deaths of 150,000,000 million human beings and destruction of 100's of millions of lives. The Black Book of Communism.

Impeach Obama Now !!!

The President is currently in violation of federal law by giving aid to the enemy.  He is actively supplying the same organization that bombed the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001.  This is the group that is fighting the Syrian government and refereed to as the rebels or terrorist.  The real terrorist have joined the rebels to wreak havoc and receive all kinds of military and cash aid from Obama.  On a side note Russia and China are supporting the Syrian government.  

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