Sarah Palin is not a Washington, Lincoln or Roosevelt

March 20, 2011

 

Sarah Palin once again opened her mouth and demonstrated her ignorance of history—this time China’s and the world.

While she was in India, Time magazine said of Sarah Palin, “Her personal appeal was apparent to those who attended the event.’She said the right things,’ said Kiran Aurora a retiree from New Delhi. ‘I don’t know if she’s Presidential material, but she’s charismatic.’…”

Time magazine said, “While lauding India’s democratic rise and economic liberalization, she expressed concern over China’s growing economic influence and militarization. She described Chinese ownership of American debt as ‘dangerous’ and questioned the country’s new military buildup.”

Palin said, “I personally have huge military concerns about China. They are stockpiling ballistic missiles, submarines, new age ultra modern fighter aircraft. Is that all for a defensive posture? How could that be when you don’t see a tangible outside threat to that country?”

If Sarah Palin knew history, she would know that “no threat today” does not mean “no threat tomorrow”.

With history as our teacher, we quickly learn that there are no guarantees for the future and that even America is not safe from change.


Is Sarah Palin America’s next Ronald Reagan?

In fact, America has changed much since 1776 when the Founders created a Republic where only 10% of citizen were allowed to vote in national elections.  Today America has become the democracy the Founding Fathers feared.  What started out as 13 states spread along the east coast of North America has grown into a global empire that has hundreds of military bases around the world.

Global Research says, “With more than 2,500,000 U.S. (military) personnel serving across the planet and military bases spread across each continent, it’s time to face up to the fact that our American democracy has spawned a global empire.”

After we add together the distruction and millions of deaths from the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan then include what America, Britain and France are doing in Libya, we have more evidence that explains why China has a right to a strong modern military.

After all, the best offense is a strong defense.

A look at China’s history from the early 19th century starting with the Opium Wars (started by Great Britain and France then later joined by America); the invasion to suppress the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 (American troops also took part in that invasion of China), and two wars with Japan ending in 1945 with the conclusion of World War II, China has good reasons to maintain a strong military for potential future threats.

Every country should have a strong, modern military, which may be the best deterrent to an invasion and war.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, China, Chinese history, history, military, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The KMT–CIA Heroin, Cocaine Pipeline to the US

March 20, 2011

The CIA, in an alliance with the Nationalist Chinese (KMT), addicted millions of Americans on drugs such as heroin and cocaine to finance a covert war against the spread of Communism.

The KMT’s leader was the brutal, authoritarian dictator Chiang Kai-shek of Taiwan, which the US still supports. Chiang Kai-shek ruled Taiwan with an iron fist until his death.

However, it wouldn’t be until the 2000 presidential election in Taiwan that the KMT’s hold on power came to an end there.

I first learned of the KMT-CIA drug pipeline into the US in the early 1980s when I read of Congressional hearings leading to the closing of Air America, a covert airline owned by the CIA that was one of the methods used to move illegal drugs out of Southeast Asia and into the hands of US citizens.

While writing of all things Chinese, I forgot about the Nationalist (KMT) Chinese generals that worked with the CIA during the Vietnam war to supply American troops in Vietnam and addicts in the US with heroin and cocaine in trade for weapons.

After the Chinese Communists under Mao won the Civil War in 1949, a large force of KMT troops in southern China fled to the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, which is located in Laos, Thailand and Burma. That’s when the KMT became involved in the drug trade with the CIA.

For reminding me of this dark chapter of America’s history (which evidence says is still an open book), I thank a ’21st Century Marco Polo, who is a committed and experienced human rights and legal education professional with a history of working internationally throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

Kevin Ryan writing for 911 Blogger.com reviewed American War Machine written by Peter Dale Scott.

Ryan writes, “This book examines a wide-ranging number of covert US operations since World War II, and, among other things, demonstrates that many of these operations were intimately connected with, and dependent on, illicit drug trafficking….”

The Senophobic, American capitalist obsession with everything Communist led the US down this dark path that introduced an expressway of  heroin and cocaine into the US in what may contribute to the eventual failure of the most successful and powerful democracy in the history of humanity.

I have embedded a four part series of an audio transcript of a 60 Minutes broadcast of the CIA controlled drug trade.


60 Minutes on CIA Drug Smuggling – Part 1

 


60 Minutes on CIA Drug Smuggling – Part 2

 


60 Minutes on CIA Drug Smuggling – Part 3

 


60 Minutes on CIA Drug Smuggling – Part 4

To understand the impact on US society, Drug Rehabs.org says, “The trafficking of illicit drugs burdens various components of domestic financial sectors as individuals and organizations frequently engage in illegal activates to generate income in order to purchase drugs or finance drug trafficking operations. Mortgage fraud (think 2008 financial crises which originated in New York), counterfeiting, shoplifting, insurance fraud, ransom kidnapping, identity theft, home invasion, personal property theft, and many other criminal activates often are undertaken by drug users and distributers to support drug addictions…”

Did you know that Mao, after winning the Chinese Civil War (1926 to 1949) between the Communists and Nationalists, ended drug trafficking and drug use in China in about 24 hours?

Illegal drugs wouldn’t return to China until after Mao’s death when China joined the WTO and opened its doors to world trade.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

2 Comments | America, American culture, business, capitalism, China, Chinese history, Communism, economy, environment, military, politics, Taiwan | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Challenge of Developing China

March 19, 2011

In a virtual conversation with several others at Understanding China, One Blog at a Time, hosted by an anonymous American working (or once worked) in China, an incident at a McDonalds in China of a baby defecating in a washbasin is mentioned.

This led to a series of comments where Ontario Mike says he is “sick of hearing of China…” or Omar Tabee who said, “China has one of the most barbaric and backwards histories mankind has known.”

Tabee’s statement was one of the most ignorant I’ve read since writing this Blog. Historical facts say otherwise. For more than two thousand years until the 19th century, China was the most powerful, wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation on the earth. Then in about a century, the West shot ahead of China during the industrial revolution.

My comments, which Ontario Mike called “long winded”, were an attempt to explain why China is the way it is and some of its history.  Without knowing a country’s history, you cannot fairly judge that country, its government or its people.

In May 2010, I wrote a series of five posts about the importance of electricity bringing China into the modern world.  

In fact, in 1952, China’s electrical generating capacity was almost nonexistent and most of the people in China lived as they have for millennia—some still do.

In China’s Electric Challenge, I wrote about what it would take to bring electricity to China’s 1.3 billion people and how difficult that task was going to be. It wasn’t until after Mao’s death in 1976 that China seriously started building electrical power plants and extending the grid. The first step was to provide electricity to urban China, which had a population larger than the United States and China did it faster than the US did a century earlier.

Then in Electricity is the Key, I posted a chart showing the electrical generation projections for China from 2010 to 2030 and mentioned the gap in living standards between rural and urban China was due to the lack of electricity and paved roads in remote areas far from urban centers.

In VOLTING all of China into the 21st Century, I compared China to the United States. I also wrote of China’s plans to extend the grid to rural China until China’s night sky looked like America at night, and I included photos so readers could see the difference between the US and China.

As a further comparison, I wrote America Electrified (a two part series) that covers the time and effort it took to build America’s electrical power grid.

Thomas Edison built the first power plant in 1882. Forty-five years later, the first power grid was established in one state, Pennsylvania, and it wouldn’t be until after World War II and the 1950s that America would extend the electric grid to most of the country.

It took America almost seventy years to build a power grid and China didn’t start building one until the 1980s with about five times the people to hook up. As can be seen from America’s history, modernization takes time.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

1 Comment | America, China, Chinese history, economy, environment, science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Learning from the Qianlong Emperor at the Met

March 12, 2011

I’ve written of the Qianlong Emperor before. He was one of China’s greatest rulers. During the 18th century, this devout Buddhist was a contemporary of France’s Louis XV, Catherine the Great of Russia and George Washington in America. At the time, he ruled the most powerful, wealthiest country on earth.

In the Qianlong Emperor and Google, I wrote if Google had read what the Qianlong Emperor (1736-1796) wrote in his famous letter to King George the III in 1793 — when China was strong enough to resist external influence — it might understand why China reacted the way it did when Google refused to censor its search engine.

In fact, the Chinese make decisions based on a cultural foundation that many in the West do not understand.

However, we may learn much of China if we pay attention to its history. Although China has changed a lot as it modernizes, the Confucian, Buddhist, Taoist foundation that makes the Chinese unique still exists.

In The Economist’s February 5 issue, Paradise on earth, we learn more of the Chinese and how they honor their ancestors.

The Economist says, “Unwilling to challenge the record of the longest-serving Chinese monarch (his beloved grandfather, the Kangxi emperor) who ruled for 61 years, Qianlong vowed to remain no more than six decades on the throne.”  The Qianlong Emperor kept his word and retired several years before his death.

The Economist’s piece was about The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City, which is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York until May 1.  It said, “This exhibition may be the only chance to have a good look at its treasures.”

The Met Museum of Art curator Mike Hearn (in the embedded YouTube video) says, “This exhibition’s real purpose is to teach us more about what is great about China and what we can understand about China. We will then be able to use (this knowledge) in our lives…politically as well as culturally…to recognize both China’s greatness and its potential as a partner.”

Discover China’s Greatest Emperors

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | Buddhism, Buddhist, China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Confucianism, cultural differences, family values, history, Taoism | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Jade Culture

March 6, 2011

Cultures I know of that valued jade more than gold were the Aztecs, Incas, Mayans and Chinese.

In fact, China’s history with jade has been documented back more than 7,000 years, as Archaeologists have discovered jade objects dating from the early Neolithic period (about 5000 BC).


On the Road of Jade

Experts of the Zhejiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology found a 6,000 year-old jade workshop in China. Inside the ruins, piles of stone slices and primitive tools were found along with twenty jade rings.

Xinhua reported that the ruins were located in Tonglu county in Zhejiang province.

In 12th century China, a treatise was written about the property of jade, which resulted in 100 volumes with 700 color illustrations.

Confucius believed jade was the symbol of intelligence, humanity, loyalty and truthfulness, and the Chinese have called it eternal, divine, the Stone of Heaven and Earth, and the stone of tranquility.


Chinese Jade Culture

Peter Luca writes of the Health Properties of Jade in China at Suite101.com.  He says “for centuries, imperial households and courts, ate jade, wore jade, sucked on jade and were buried with it.”

Luca says, “Scientific research has confirmed that the stone contains elements such as: Zinc, Iron, Copper, Manganese, Cobalt, Selenium, Chromium, Titanium, Lithium, Calcium and Sodium. A current line of thinking is that, wearing natural products for a long period of time can supplement the body’s diet in its requirement for these elements.”

Jade also absorbs the sun’s energy and lets it out at night.

The finest Jadeite comes from Myanmar while Nephrite (another type of jade) is found in China, Guatemala, New Zealand and Canada.

As you can see, we have barely scratched the surface of this stone.

Discover China’s Ancient Chimes

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, cultural differences | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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