Naomi Klein on China and the Olympics

[gateley]

Run time: 07:53 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXAACXUh7yI   Posted on YouTube: August 09, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: August 09, 2008 By DU Member: gateley Views on DU: 1313

 

[jwirr]

1. She talks about their cocoon which seems to indicate an isolation

from the rest of the world. I do not remember who said it but I read that China has always been more about defending their borders than threatening the rest of the world with domination. How do the rest of you see this in light of their advances in recent years? Are they going for Empire or just dominance at home in cooperation with world corporations?

[iamthebandfanman]

2. i think they are just smart

i mean, why be aggressive if you dont have to be ?
i think they see a situation where the other super powers are slowly destroying themselves(imploding) and they will just wait it out until theres a better time to actually be aggressive.

if you hadnt noticed, they like to put on grand shows of how nice and compassionate they are...
its the ole wolf in sheeps clothing. nothing new.

as far as their 'advances' go, id challenge the notion that they have advanced much... sure , the large metro cities have definitely progressed and wealth is around.. but if you go into the more isolated regions youll find nothing but despair, hunger, and poverty.

just ask the farmers that got their water taken away so it could go to the olympics for fountains and such... or the poor who live in the city whove had their houses surrounded by walls so people cant see the poverty while they are there for the olympics...

china is a threat to this world, whether thats apparent to everyone or not. propaganda goes a long way, especially if you live so far away and removed.

btw,
i dunno why we all still refer to china as a communist state... it is that only in name.
when you have a mixture of corporate paradise + heavy authoritarianism, youve gone into fascism.

[jwirr]

3. I think that any advances they make are going to be unsustainable

in the coming years as oil and energy costs go up, as pollution becomes worse, as their population grows and as food shortages happen. I also agree with what you said about their just waiting us out. That goes along with what I read about their non-aggressive world stance.

[gateley]

5. Interesting question.

On one hand, they're sure to dominate the US since they hold the mortgage on our house. They will probably bail out other countries as well when/if they hit the skids.

They have to see how they're physically destroying their empire, and making it unlivable. I'm not sure if they CAN just stay inside and tend to their own even if they have no outside threats.

[KillgoreTrout]

12. China Has Always Been.............

isolationist. They didn't even open up to the west until Nixon came along. I would love to talk with a few people who have lived in China all their lives.
I think the larger a society becomes, the less freedom you will have, just by the nature of the number of people in that society.
The bad thing is, Like Naiomi said, is the involuntary displacement of people by the government.

[gateley]

4. Delete - wrong place. nt

[onethatcares]

6. Does anyone have the numbers as to their military strength?

their spending on offensive weapons? I'm pretty certain we'd find them to be quite high in relation to any threat they face. To confront them militarialy would be an act of sheer stupidity. I see them taking our dollars for the crap sold in our stores as just another front, but I believe that the leaders very much like the feel of leather seats and the sound of great stereo systems, so they're in league with every other planet raper.

[raystorm7]

10. Military strength is in their numbers willing, ready, and prepped to fight, among other trump cards.

[JohnyCanuck]

7. Unveiling Police State 2.0

The Olympics: Unveiling Police State 2.0
by Naomi Klein

SNIP

Like it or not, you are about to be awed by China’s sheer awesomeness.

The games have been billed as China’s “coming out party” to the world. They are far more significant than that. These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organizing society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism — central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance — harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Some call it “authoritarian capitalism,” others “market Stalinism,” personally I prefer “McCommunism.”

SNIP

As for those Chinese citizens who might go off-message during the games — Tibetan activists, human right campaigners, malcontent bloggers — hundreds have been thrown in jail in recent months. Anyone still harboring protest plans will no doubt be caught on one of Beijing’s 300,000 surveillance cameras and promptly nabbed by a security officer; there are reportedly 100,000 of them on Olympics duty.

The goal of all this central planning and spying is not to celebrate the glories of Communism, regardless of what China’s governing party calls itself. It is to create the ultimate consumer cocoon for Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cell phones, McDonald’s happy meals, Tsingtao beer, and UPS delivery — to name just a few of the official Olympic sponsors. But the hottest new market of all is the surveillance itself. Unlike the police states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, China has built a Police State 2.0, an entirely for-profit affair that is the latest frontier for the global Disaster Capitalism Complex.

Chinese corporations financed by U.S. hedge funds, as well as some of American’s most powerful corporations — Cisco, General Electric, Honeywell, Google — have been working hand in glove with the Chinese government to make this moment possible: networking the closed circuit cameras that peer from every other lamp pole, building the “Great Firewall” that allows for remote internet monitoring, and designing those self-censoring search engines.

SNIP

There is a bitter irony here. When Beijing was awarded the games seven years ago, the theory was that international scrutiny would force China’s government to grant more rights and freedom to its people. Instead, the Olympics have opened up a backdoor for the regime to massively upgrade its systems of population control and repression. And remember when Western companies used to claim that by doing business in China, they were actually spreading freedom and democracy? We are now seeing the reverse: investment in surveillance and censorship gear is helping Beijing to actively repress a new generation of activists before it has the chance to network into a mass movement.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/07/10860/

[gateley]

8. Ooh - you should post this as a dedicated thread. Great find! nt

[goddess40]

13. Every country that holds the games violates peoples civil rights

Read Dave Zirin's books about sports and politics's, all the countries do it to some extent.

[ihavenobias]

9. K & R

[KillgoreTrout]

11. Freedom's Just Another Word............

for nothing left to lose. So it's been said. I don't really think we are all that much freer here in America. We have been a police state since the early 70s.

[antimatter98]

14. The Chinese have said this too about Democracy/Economic Growth

I heard a BBC World Service program several months ago that was about the Chinese operating in Africa, specifically, in Angola, where Chinese construction companies were engaged in massive construction projects. The BBC spoke to the manager on site in Angola for the projects and he made the comment that essentially, America was realizing, looking at China's success, that Democracy was not an important part of economic growth, that you could have China's growth without Democratic institutions.

Before this documentary, I heard also on the BBC a discussion of why Russians were not that interested in Democracy, and the comment was made that well, Russians had money, satellite TV, cars, food, sports, movies, shopping, and so why would they need Democracy?

And we certainly see that in America, our treasured Democratic institutions along with the Constitution, and social programs, are being dismantled---and nothing is done, there is no major outcry in Congress or among citizens. Democracy seems to be in the way of our corporations, who, if you look at what they are doing in China, are totally engaged there economically, human rights be damned.

Good Luck.