Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label United States

How Dictatorial Regimes Use Money To Infiltrate The Media in Democratic Countries

United States Capitol (Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC BY-SA 3.0) During the Cold War, the Soviet Union sought to undermine the United States and its allies through a variety of active measures aimed at influencing and manipulating public opinion. Although the Cold War - understood in the narrow sense of the confrontation between a capitalist and a communist economic system - has ended, the struggle between different political ideologies and ways of life has not. As the Soviet-style centrally planned economic system was abandoned by nearly every country, the ideological confrontation shifted. States like Russia and China have embraced a mixed market economy, yet they have retained an authoritarian political system.  While capitalism conquered the authoritarian states of the former communist bloc, authoritarianism appears to be creeping into the polity of the US-led "free world". The Republican Party in the United States, for instance, has turned to authoritarianism . Accord...

It's time for the West to restrict trade with China and sanction the Chinese Communist leadership

National People's Congress, 2013 (photo by Dong Fang via Wikimedia Commons) On March 9, 2000, US President Bill Clinton gave a speech on US-China trade relations in which he advocated for the expansion of trade between the two countries and defended his administration's decision to push for China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). President Clinton's argument in favour of closer trade relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) was based on two assumptions. First, that increased trade with China would benefit the US economically, and that if the US failed to promote trade, then other countries would benefit from the opportunities that the Chinese market offered. Second, that closer economic ties between the US and the PRC would allow Washington to "pull China in the right direction."  " Last fall, as all of you know, the United States signed the agreement to bring China into the W.T.O. on terms that will ope...

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg - Who Claimed That China's Xi Jinping Is Not A Dictator - Now Wants To Run For President

Michael Bloomberg (image by AFGE  via Wikimedia Commons) Billionaire business mogul and ex-mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg is reportedly preparing to enter the Democratic presidential primary  . Last March Bloomberg had ruled out running for president, but he is now "increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well positioned" to defeat President Trump, as his adviser Howard Wolfson told NPR. Wolfson was a high-profile aide on Hillary Clinton's 2008 primary campaign. What exactly prompted Bloomberg to change his mind is not clear, but it is possible that he feels increasingly concerned about the rise of left-wing candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Other wealthy individuals, like Bill Gates, have recently expressed their opposition to wealth tax plans. Bloomberg's entry into the primary race clearly shows what is wrong with the American political system, dominated by elites who think that the US gover...

Did China or Automation Lead to US De-industrialization?

West Exit of Zhengzhou East Railway Station. Zhengzhou, in China's Henan province, is famous for its "iPhone City" (photo by  Windmemories   via Wikimedia Commons) Automation has become a major topic of debate in the United States. A recent study by Oxford Economics claimed that robots could take over 20 million manufacturing jobs around the world by 2030. Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has made the fight against automation's disruption of the labour market one of the central themes of his campaign. "Technology is quickly displacing a large number of workers, and the pace will only increase as automation and other forms of artificial intelligence become more advanced," Yang wrote on his campaign website. "⅓ of American workers will lose their jobs to automation by 2030 according to McKinsey. This has the potential to destabilize our economy and society if unaddressed." Amid Donald Trump's "trade war" with ...

The United States and The Myth of Free Market - The Role of the Government In Historical Perspective

"The Wealth of the Nation" by Seymour Fogel via Wikimedia Commons In his bestseller Free to Choose economist Milton Friedman offered a vision of American economic history that revolved around the idea of freedom. He wrote: "Ever since the first settlements of Europeans in the New World America has been a magnet for people seeking adventure, fleeing from tyranny, or simply trying to make a better life for themselves and their children ... When they arrived, they did not find streets paved with gold; they did not find an easy life. They did find freedom and an opportunity to make the most of their talents. Through hard work, ingenuity, thrift, and luck, most of them succeeded ... "The story of the United States is the story of an economic miracle and a political miracle that was made possible by the translation into practice of two sets of ideas .... One [of them] was embodied in the Wealth of Nations, the masterpiece [by] Adam Smith [w...

The Putin-proof golden rule to combat Russia's active measures - stop trashing each other

Kremlin, Moscow (by ŠœŠøŠ½ŠµŠµŠ²Š° Š®. [Julmin] , retouched by Surendil via Wikimedia Commons)) In his report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election Special Counsel Robert Mueller described how Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) spread propaganda and disinformation and manipulated American public opinion through the use of social media. "The IRA conducted social media operations targeted at large U.S. audiences with the goal of sowing discord in the U.S. political system," the document stated. These operations are described by the report as "active measures," a term that refers to the Russian intelligence's methods of propaganda and subversion directed at foreign governments. Originally, the phrase was used in the context of the Soviet Union's secret service, the KGB, but its practice has continued after the fall of the Soviet Union and has once again become a central part of Moscow's strategy. Oleg Kalugin , a f...