I'm very interested in your insights from your experience inside the Chinese system of education and beyond. I'm particularly interested in engaging with you about the field of Bioethics, typically applied to work backwards from a policy decision that rationalizes and justifies it as satisfying bioethical concerns using clever linguistics and pretzel logic, but we can save that for another thread. Because I believe the field may actually be useful in efforts to unravel much of what has happened, the breaches of ethics can't be linguistically waived away with a magic word wand.
Back to this piece of yours I'd appreciate your thoughts on a Chinese research book I discovered going back to some of my early pandemic readings when I was taking in a lot of US foreign policy writings and official Chinese media stories. I read the following Foreign Affairs article in March, 2020. Foreign Affairs is perhaps the most influential foreign policy publication in the world, A Council on Foreign Relations production:
It is a long book, I list some of the chapters and sections that I found most interesting in my stack that I introduce it on for those who don't have the time to read it in it's entirety they can use this as a guide to the essentials in it:
The book introduces me to the concept of the Chinese "Double-Discipline" model of governance. External and Internal discipline. External being the heavy handed applied discipline of police and courts, authorities flexing muscle. Internal being the lighter touch of propaganda, indoctrination, re-education, mind managers.
The double-discipline model the book describes was useful to transform "The Sick Man of Asia" full of individualists and nationalists into a collectivist authoritarian governing system. Break an existing unruly population in hard with heavy external disciplinary actions. While indoctrinating the nation, particularly young, impressionable minds so they desire to place the needs of others, society above themselves, do as they are told because they believe it to be the right thing to do, virtuously, allows the heavy hand of external discipline to retreat into the background, high levels of voluntary compliance.
Disease Politics. Fear of disease proving to be most useful in fundamentally transforming a nation to adopt a collectivist authoritarian form of government, how consent is manufactured for totalitarianism. And the fact that Foreign Affairs, the CFR's mouthpiece referenced this book in March, 2020, as the entire free world shifted from a western liberal democratic response to pandemics, protecting individual civil rights and liberties into a global collectivist authoritarian/totalitarian response is more than a coincidence. With your background in China perhaps you can share more understanding on this than my reading alone has given me?
I was teaching an intro to Bioethics as part of intellectual survey course -- think of it as topics in philosophy. For most students, their first exposure. We covered environmental ethics in that course as well. The students already had some JS Mill and exposure to the Kant-Mill contrast, so that prepared them for readings from Alastair V. Campbell's Bioethics: The Basics. What you might assign to an AP high school class or a general ed college class.
Throughout that course, I was NOT enforcing the generic collectivism ideology.
You write:
"Fear of disease proving to be most useful in fundamentally transforming a nation to adopt a collectivist authoritarian form of government, how consent is manufactured for totalitarianism."
Exactly right, as I understand it.
But why limit this to China? In a book I have read but yet to review, and shame on me, Aaron Kheriaty, MD, of Human Flourishing (on Substack), has come out with an essential read: The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State. Kheriaty is concerned with the USA, with only passing references to China and parts of Western Europe.
China, as I mentioned in passing, seems to me now a fully actualized Biomedical Security State. This has nothing to do with public health. And is why I refused to return. No golden cage, please. I was a reasonably well-funded professor at the rank of full professor -- now, I am nobody. Loved my students, hated the system.
You write: "the entire free world shifted from a western liberal democratic response to pandemic" Forgetting Sweden? In fact, you are even ignoring Japan which did NOT mandate the vaccine. I've covered that here.
Nonetheless, the transformation of our Constitutional Republic into a kleptocratic Corporate-State with a rigorously defined caste-system has been going on -- in my opinion -- for some time. No doubt the CCP is facilitating and enjoying the process. But the USA is not yet a vassal state of China -- we have responsibility for our failures.
In my opinion, you are giving China too much credit for the global shift towards "collectivist authoritarian form[s] of government." Please do give certain EU states, and the WEF some credit as well. Please also give some credit to the bi-coastal globalists who figure prominently in American academia, business, and culture.
I need full and well-thought out, carefully written post to respond properly to your concerns. So it's time I got off my ass and discussed Kheriaty's The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State.
My final comments in this reply. Many of my former students (I truthfully think most) know what it is going on. They are not buying it. The CCP relentlessly messages because it has to -- but this quickly just becomes background noise, part of the environment. Powerful and insidious, nevertheless. But what do to? They graduate and face practical necessities -- they need employment. Open resistance, unless it is token gestures from privileged children of the elite, is not going to happen -- or happen often. It's a waiting game.
Thank you for your reply. I did not make clear in my comments that my understanding is much closer to what you describe. I do not lay our current world at the feet of China or China's mendacity. I see it as all home grown. I see the history of the Fascists among us, over a century, hidden among us, the Bush crime family syndicate a part of the the Rockefeller's Morgan's, Thyssens's Brown's, Harriman's, etc, a great many global industrialists and profiteers. Many who propped up Hitler at the same time they propped up Stalin, then propped up Mao and innumerable numbers of despots they put into power around the globe to serve their interests.
What I was linking to the book for was that I see it as a blueprint, a study guide for these malevolent forces that the CFR, Foreign Affairs was trying directing them to, when the entire response to disease was transformed from all pandemic plans that came before it. The blueprint. That's what the book serves as.
And I actually see the Chinese propaganda that came out early in 2020 as cautionary to us, telling us many truths, that we should avoid a transformation into authoritarianism in the middle of a crisis. That antivirals worked against CV, like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. The Chinese told us truth that our own governments did not. They gave fair warning. That we, our leaders didn't listen to. Chose not to listen to.
I do not forget Sweden, nor do I ignore Japan. But I know those societies are high trust societies that followed a different model of population control. The behaviorists studied all of the different "laboratories" that existed outside the main one they imposed. Florida was such a model to study willing compliance based on pure propaganda, "internal discipline," versus mandates, mask usage up and down on faces as the media reported fear, like a volume control, up and down. Even without threat of punishment, "external discipline."
Sweden is one of the most obedient societies out there, so is Japan. They need no mandates to gain high compliance, you just obey. The Nordic peoples are enculturated with obedience. Doesn't take a heavy hand. Same with the Japanese. That Internal discipline model is already a part of them. Mandates are external discipline. Fiercely independent and free people don't submit without external discipline. Sweden and Japan are not the homes of fiercely independent and free peoples. Much more collaborative and cooperative, collectivist societies to begin with.
I'll respectfully pass on fully endorsing your comments on Sweden and Japan. Back to Sweden, briefly: NO school lock-dows. No small businesses shutdowns. No demonization of the unvaxxed. Overall, far better results. Still to be admired. Sweden provides a natural history case study in comparison with the rest of the EU and Northern Europe. Even you don't feel they stack well against the USA, UK, etc.
For Asian societies with historically collectivism traditions, please do compare Japan to China or even South Korea. Better results. Why? In part, because Japan did allow for individual freedom, and did allow doctors to use whatever treatments deemed appropriate -- including the unmentionable ivermectin. With an aging population similar to the USA, Japan has about 1/3 our pop size but a ridiculously lower proportion of Covid deaths. No vaccine mandates. Lockdowns illegal under their constitution. Even as a collectivist society, which I will concede is obviously true on many levels (having lived in Japan three years), Japan proves your general point: it allowed for greater individual liberty and local decision-making over top-down control. The result: far better results.
I actually think both these nations help make your more general point, for what it is worth.
Yes, I see the value in their examples. And use them from time to time in conversations. But I also know that the differences in societal values are real. Western rogue "cowboy" persona's, rugged individualism aren't associated with either Japan or Sweden. No "Rebel Without a Cause" James Dean's, no Dukes of Hazzard Bo & Luke's making their way the only way the know how, just a little bit more than the law will allow cultural heroes.
This story is out of Iceland. Iceland did have mandates, unlike Sweden. But it shares many cultural and societal values with Sweden, having been under Swedish flag in its history. About a nurse in Iceland who defied the testing mandates highlights that observation. Nordic values of obedience:
Could terminate work contract of a nurse who denied taking rapid Covid tests
"employees' obedience to the employer's legal order is one of the primary duties of employees"
"an employee must submit to the mastery of his employer"
"work procedures must be obeyed"
"breach of a duty to obey or refusal by the employee to obey a directive"
"employee’s breach of the duty to obey"
"the employee’s refusal to obey is considered a serious failure"
"Obviously, obedience is considered to be an important part of running a business"
"obedience obligations are evidently to be regarded as critical to the operation of the policy"
"The Court finds that the breach of the duty of obedience by the nurse during the time in question constitutes a serious breach of the employment contract"
"The woman was then sentenced to pay the company Klíníkin 1.2 million ISK [$8,500 USD] in legal costs."
You could choose not to obey in Sweden without formal punishment. But those who didn't weren't looked up to as being brave or inspirational for others to disobey. They were tolerated. And that says nothing of the impact of "internal discipline" propaganda and indoctrination psychological campaigns. That make people "voluntarily" comply to do things that harm themselves. How voluntary is it when your mind has been farked with to make you "want" to self-harm? Like masks and jabs did. You know when you sign a contract, like to buy or sell property there is language saying that "i am not under any coercion or duress to sign this document." Knowing that those elements take away true free will. Applies to government coercion and duress, too. Or should.
China also published editorials and opinions that warned us about treating pandemics with political science instead of medical science. There were many editorials and opinion columns that followed Trump's declaration of a travel ban from China in late January, 2020. Travel bans known by medical science to be ineffective at preventing, slowing the spread of pandemic influenza and dangerous for civil liberties:
Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza
A sample of China's early 2020 official editorials, essentially saying that changing governing systems in the middle of a crisis will make that crisis even worse. China, CCP China, said in so many words that in the middle of a crisis, "dance with the one who brung ya." Change governing systems in less stressful, dangerous times if you're really interested in protecting lives, not just changing political systems:
""The key to improving state capacity lies in how to boost the leading role of their own governance system, not breaking away or subverting the existing one." "[Western countries] are subject to different systems and traditions that impede them from directly copying China. Even if they do, the effect will be just the opposite."
China told us that we had antivirals that would be safe and effective to manage CV. Like Ivermectin and HCQ?:
"Medical researchers are already discovering that certain existing anti-viral medications seem to be effective against this Corona virus."
"...whether or not a person specifically does have the Corona virus or some other viral bug presenting as pneumonia, the treatment is the same supportive treatment anyway."
China asserted that their people are actually more free than the US and west because they do as they are told willingly. Mind you, this is only after seventy years of substantial indoctrination, following their brutal crackdown on individual liberty-minded Chinese, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions during Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. China, as the link I have in my Substack piece on political infectious disease shows, practices "double discipline" governance. External discipline - police force and Internal discipline - behavioral science. How an entire population can be transformed to prefer an authoritarian model, one that makes them happy owning nothing and eating bugs:
Finding fault with China a symptom of West’s ideological crisis
"Chinese people are willing to endure a period of inconvenience and limits on their travel. They know these are necessary measures that will work, and they don't feel like being subjected to a so-called autocracy."
FF - Is that a better model of governance?
China proclaimed that their model of governance was better at handling a crisis. Better. That's a subjective word. If by better they meant that in a time of crisis a population will want a firm hand of leadership and their authoritarian model provides what the people want, then that could be a plausible definition of 'better.'
But if by better the measurement of actual deaths resulting from a crisis, well, that's a different story. A review of the history of deaths resulting from government policies, policies believed by government officials to improve public health and safety:
Of course, we see the statistics of deaths attributed to CV as reported by world governments. Knowing that there have been many different criteria applies to determine how many deaths were from CV; most captured deaths *with* CV. With that statistical noise impossible to make a meaningful comparison all we have to measure with a meaningful degree of confidence is excess deaths. And by that measure, the nations that imposed the fewest restrictions, had the lowest vaccinations rates, followed the least authoritarian form of pandemic crisis governance have the lowest excess death rates. Charts look remarkably similar to the charts found in the 1994 Univ. of Hawaii report on death by government link above.
The sharp turn into authoritarian/totalitarian governance by the US and western liberal freedom-oriented nations came at a very high price. A predictable and predicted explosion in excess deaths. Which means our authorities knew. Or should have known. The science, even the political science that the UH report reflects, demonstrates how much more deadly authoritarian/totalitarian regimes are compared to government that respects freedom, individual rights. China was wrong about their model being better. And our nations abandoned the model that we do best trying to copy China with slightly less oppressive measures.
You write: "The sharp turn into authoritarian/totalitarian governance by the US and western liberal freedom-oriented nations came at a very high price. "
I'm not sure it was a sharp turn. I think it has been in makings for decades. I will try to cover in full-length post.
To summarize without nuance this fine essay, we experienced or should have the equivalent of a bad but not horrifically bad flu season. It became a pandemic because that allowed for a power-grab. Not just by national governments, but by the would-be global governmental organizations. Many based in philanthropy, the EU, or the UN.
So again, respectfully, you are giving China too much credit.
Please refer to the comment I just wrote to your previous reply. We are more in agreement as to origins than your reply conveys. Just because I didn't make that the central part of my messages to you doesn't mean I'm not aware of it. I was focused on the nuances of China that you know, not the macro global forces that are driving this.
As for Chinese governance and media models, China practices "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" as they call it. Implicit in that phraseology is that other nations and regions contemplated in future Great Reset/Agenda 2030 constructs is the US practicing Socialism with American Characteristics. And I'd say we are well on our way. Some reading as a primer by what is meant by Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Followed by a description of what media looks like in a socialist with Chinese characteristics configuration.
"All media continues to follow regulations imposed by the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP on subjects considered taboo by the CCP, including but not limited to the legitimacy of the party, pro-democracy movements, human rights in Tibet, the Uyghur genocide, pornography, and the banned religious topics, such as the Dalai Lama and Falun Gong. Hong Kong, which has maintained a separate media ecosystem than mainland China, is also witnessing increasing self-censorship"
"In the 1990s and early 2000s, the ways in which the CCP operated—especially the introduction of reforms aimed at decentralizing power—spurred a period of greater media autonomy in several ways:
The growth of "peripheral"—local and some regional—media. This trend decentralized and dampened CCP oversight. In general, the greater the distance is between reporters and media outlets, and Beijing and important provincial capitals, the greater their leeway.
A shift toward administrative and legal regulation of the media and away from more fluid and personal oversight. CCP efforts to rely on regulations rather than whim to try to control the media—as evidenced by the dozens of directives set forth when the State Press and Publications Administration was created in 1987, and by new regulations in 1990 and 1994—probably were intended to tighten CCP control, making it a matter of law rather than personal relationships. In fact, however, these regulations came at a time when official resources were being stretched more thinly and individual officials were becoming less willing—and less able—to enforce regulations.
Vicissitudes of media acceptability. Since the early 1990s, the types of media coverage deemed acceptable by the regime have risen sharply. Growing uncertainties about what is permissible and what is out of bounds sometimes work to the media's interests. Often, however, these uncertainties encourage greater self-censorship among Chinese journalists and work to the benefit of the CCP's media control apparatus."
"Under Xi Jinping
Since Xi Jinping became in 2012 the CCP general secretary, censorship has been significantly stepped up. During a visit to Chinese state media, Xi stated that "party-owned media must hold the family name of the party" and that the state media "must embody the party's will, safeguard the party's authority". Under Xi, investigative journalism has been driven almost to extinction within China.
In 2018, as part of an overhaul of CCP and government bodies, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) was renamed into the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) with its film, news media and publications being transferred to the Central Propaganda Department. Additionally, the control of China Central Television (CCTV, including its international edition, China Global Television), China National Radio (CNR) and China Radio International (CRI) were transferred to the newly established China Media Group (CMG) under the control of the Central Propaganda Department"
"The CCP has used the COVID-19 pandemic as cover to further reduce media freedoms in China. According to Radio Free Asia, in December 2022, the National Press and Publication Administration issued a directive stating that in order to obtain credentials as a professional journalist, they must pass a national exam and "...must support the leadership of the Communist Party of China, conscientiously study, publicize and implement Xi Jinping's thoughts on the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics, resolutely implement the party's theory, line, principles and policies, and adhere to the correct political direction and public opinion guidance.""
"The number of newspapers in mainland China has increased from 43—virtually all CCP newspapers—in 1968 to 382 in 1980 and more than 2,200 today. By one official estimate, there are now more than 7,000 magazines and journals in the country. The number of copies of daily and weekly newspapers and magazines in circulation grew fourfold between the mid-1960s and the mid-to-late 1980s, reaching 310 million by 1987."
"The diversity in mainland Chinese media is partly because most state media outlets no longer receive heavy subsidies from the government, and are expected to cover their expenses through commercial advertising. They can no longer merely serve as mouthpieces of the government, but also need to attract advertising through programming that people find attractive. While the government issues directives defining what can be published, it does not prevent, and in fact encourages outlets to compete for viewers and advertising."
"The internet in China is heavily censored which limits public access to international media and non-sanctioned Chinese media. The main bodies for internet control are the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, a CCP body established in 2014, and the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is under the Cyberspace Affairs Commission. Additionally, the Ministry of Public Security's Cyber Police force is responsible for internal security, regulating online content, and investigation of Internet fraud, scams, pornography, separatism, and extremism."
"Communist Party control
The media and communications industry in mainland China is controlled by the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP. The principal mechanism to force media outlets to comply with the CCP's requests is the vertically organized nomenklatura system of cadre appointments, and includes those in charge of the media industry. The CCP utilizes a wide variety of tools to maintain control over news reporting including "direct ownership, accreditation of journalists, harsh penalties for online criticism, and daily directives to media outlets and websites that guide coverage of breaking news stories." National Radio and Television Administration oversees the administration of state-owned enterprises involved in the radio and television, reporting directly to the Central Propaganda Department."
"- It continues to make clear that criticism of certain fundamental policies—such as those on PRC sovereignty over territories under Republic of China administration and Tibet and on Hong Kong's future in the wake of the transfer of Hong Kong sovereignty on July 1, 1997 —are off limits.
- It holds weekly meetings with top newspaper editors to direct them as to what news items they want focused upon and which stories they want to go unreported. The controversial closure of the Freezing Point journal was generally unreported in mainland China due to government orders.
- It has maintained a system of uncertainty surrounding the boundaries of acceptable reporting, encouraging self-censorship. One media researcher has written that "it is the very arbitrariness of this control regime that cows most journalists into more conservative coverage."
FF - Again, I'm curious about your thoughts on my understanding of China informed by this type of awareness?
1. The CCP messaging is relentless. As I mentioned. At the same time, a shocking number of people have work-arounds -- ways of getting news and information from outside China. For obvious reasons, I will not describe those work-arounds here.
2. Please be careful about confusing or conflating the desire of CPP for total domination with the various local realities in mainland China. I am not denying the effectiveness of the CCP in general terms, or their control over established outlets. But there is also desperation to their efforts. They continually broadcast and permeate -- and the more they do so, the more they are tuned out. Many people have learned to put a facade of consent, and from behind that, go about their business. The Party on some level knows this -- but they keep doing more of the same. It's no longer working for many younger people. I'm not promising you a revolution. But I stand by my earlier remarks in the post:
The students were neither zombies nor robots nor brain-washed ideologues. They had their biases – as we all do – but were generally both curious and critically open-minded. Likewise, they more typically tolerated or even tuned out the constant CCP messaging. True believers or mindless repeaters were very few and far in between.
That's the reality I experienced on the ground.
3. The fantasy that the CCP truly controls all is, I think, in part confession by projection about what our own power elites -- our own globalists -- wish on the American people. Recall Gates and Fauci praising the extreme Chinese covid-lockdowns. The data was already in that these did not work. Only Sweden truthfully got it right -- although Denmark, Finland, and others did some reasonably timely course-reverals. My concern is finally not China, but the USA.
As is mine. You are not in China any longer because the biosecurity state it has begun is too much for you to sacrifice and work through. Your students, even those who are not brain-washed ideologues, those who have learned to put a facade of consent on to go about their business still must obey the biosecurity state, they have no out like you did. They may not like it, but unless something is done to change the system of governance they submit. Or die. And looking at how Americans went about the pandemic I'm not sure the same human being will act any differently if/when the stakes of disobedience are the same here in the US as they are in China. They may know none of it is right, put on a facade of consent, but unless more of our countrymen refuse to put on a facade of consent the facade will become the reality of living.
And, as I've stated, Sweden is hardly a model of freedom. Sweden mandates the collection of every single citizen's DNA, the first nation to have a national biometric database. And they are a very obedient culture. Internal discipline is strong in the Nordics. Consent is manufactured through propaganda and indoctrination of what a good citizen does. No need for mandates when most all willingly comply. If being subjected to very sophisticated psychological manipulation and coercion is considered willing just because there's no risk of arrest or fine for not going along with the program.
I do find the national biometric database to be hugely disturbing. I also don't see how it eventually escapes national control -- if it has not already. A Swedish citizen might well -- rightly or wrongly -- believe they can trust their government. But it is madness to trust the WHO, many other super/international organizations, and for the that matter, the other governments which are known to collect bio-data for military as well as surveillance purposes -- China in the forefront.
Truth is, by sharing the book out of China on disease politics I was hoping you'd be curious to explore it and share with me an assessment of the tale it is telling, what there is to learn from it. Because I always believe there is something I can learn from my adversaries. I listened to Radio Moscow as a child, living in Miami and the broadcast from Havana reached my home. My first exposure to propaganda from adversaries. I was curious what they had to say about my home, my country. I even watched TASS evening news that was rebroadcast nightly on the local PBS station and would read Pravda in the local library when I'd go there on family nights. Not because I was an aspiring Marxist or lover of the USSR. But because I wanted to know how they thought. And I could tell from my own lived experiences what they were saying was untrue, partial truths, out-of-context narratives that served their purposes. That experience in grade school actually inoculated me to many forms of propaganda. Including from our own media. And I'll note that the grievances and narratives spun by the Soviet propaganda machine are *exactly* the same grievances and narratives we hear from D's and on our own media today, how racist, sexist, greedy, selfish, crime-infested, sick our nation is, all said by the USSR, verbatim, 40-50 years ago. It's almost as if the D's and media are actively trying to make the US into what the propaganda narrative has been all these years.
So I am genuinely curious about a China-focused informed analysis of the 2013 book and the official media and editorials they published in early 2020, how it fits into the Foreign Affairs (CFR) piece, agenda. As a blueprint? I don't see China as the greatest threat. The greatest threat is our own political, corporate and cultural leaders, media, right here in the good 'old USA. Other Americans. China, from my best understanding, just wants a trading partner that allows it to realize the most profit. China's CCP is really just an overhaul of their old family dynastic system, like regional mafia's that came together under a handy ideological system given the name "Communism" but really operates as a sort of Apalachin Meeting of mobsters divvying up the spoils of the rackets they have going around their nation. Call it communism to be recognized as legitimate on the global stage, but really just gangster families given respectable titles and honorifics. China's leaders just want profit, they don't care about any 'ism." If Trump was a good business partner they'd do business with him. If western liberal capitalist nations were good business partners they'd do business with them. They aren't our problem. They do them. Just want us to stay out of their internal affairs. It's the Marxists/Fascists/Oligarchs/Political mobster crime family syndicates in the US who are our problem and our biggest threat. From where I sit.
Indeed about the WHO. When "Stalin's Nanny" Susan Michie was named the WHO's Chief Behavioural Scientist and Wellcome Trust's Jeremy Farrar, WEF "Zero-Covid" founding member who resigned from the UK's SPI pandemic task force because it wasn't totalitarian enough for his liking, desired the CCP's weld-them-in-their-homes lockdown model, his only complaint that the windows of those locked down were allowed to be open and their pleas for help and food could be heard is now the WHO's Chief Scientist. Not good signs of any measure of respect for free choice, individualism coming from the WHO in future health emergencies they declare.
As to the work-arounds I understand them to be cat and mouse game. As work-arounds are created when they become too popular and begin to threaten the information control and break out, viral, they are shut down. And new ones are created. A never-ending cycle, trying to stay one step ahead of authorities.
An interview with Vladimir Putin I remember coming across many years ago asked him about what he thought the USSR did right and wrong. He said that the USSR's heavy-handed control of independent thought was wrong. That families spying on families was over-the-top. That even friends venting over drinks in homes with one another wasn't worth security state crackdowns. He recognized that people are people and will always need to vent about government, blow off steam, get mad at leaders about this or that. He said that only if dissent became an actual threat to the state should it be addressed, cracked down on. If the streets became too full of protesters, if groups began to organize in serious opposition to authority that was when authorities needed to move in and remove the threat. His lesson he took from the Soviet Union and shared with other global leaders.
That is what I see China as practicing in its cat-and-mouse game. And what we are seeing even in western liberal democracies. What the crackdown on Trump/MAGA is an offshoot of, an attempt to remove the most serious threat to the global authoritarians. Putin's advice: Bitch all you want. Just don't try to actually do something about it.
Congrats on breaking free from academia. It was once a noble institution, but it's been so thoroughly corrupted that I'm not sure any good can come from it anymore. I can see the future going one of two ways -- either a new dark age or a new Renaissance powered by independent scholars on the internet. Substack gives me some hope for the latter vision.
Some excellent content on Substack. As for the decline of American universities, what I learn terrifies me. Heather Mac Donald's (2018) The Diversity Delusion was bad enough. I have just started her recent (2023) When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. I wish it were a rant or scree. Instead, she documents painstakingly case after case. It reads like a horror story. Mind-blowingly bad. Standardized testing for Medical School, Engineering, and more now being discarded. The lack of science and math skills, no apparent problem.
I am so happy NOT to be part of American higher ed. In terms of intellectual freedom, I honestly believe I had more in China. But the problem is not confined to higher ed. The vanishing of challenging math courses and advanced placement courses from public high schools in the USA is deeply disturbing. We are competing globally with China, Finland, India, Lithuania, etc. They are not dragging everyone down to the level of the weakest performing members. Our national solutions are what? To print money and to make-up jobs with which to employ unqualified -- often, highly unqualified --people.
At the current rate of events, medical tourism will soon become a necessary option for middle-class and working-class Americans seeking both professional and affordable healthcare.
Our national solutions are what? To print money and to make-up jobs with which to employ unqualified -- often, highly unqualified --people.
Yeah, that's about it. Eventually reality will win, and it won't be pretty. We're starting to see little cracks appear, but most people are still in denial. Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to be able to fix things piece by piece. The whole edifice has to come down, and then we can rebuild.
Ocean of PDF is pretty sweet. I love anything that liberates information.
Good article. So much that we hear about China is just propaganda, Nice to see an alternative pespective that shatters some of these fallacies. Linking today @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
The CCP strikes me as bad as they say. But people are people, like everywhere else. Not everyone in China is zombie marching to the beat of the CCP -- far from it, even though the music never stops.
I'm very interested in your insights from your experience inside the Chinese system of education and beyond. I'm particularly interested in engaging with you about the field of Bioethics, typically applied to work backwards from a policy decision that rationalizes and justifies it as satisfying bioethical concerns using clever linguistics and pretzel logic, but we can save that for another thread. Because I believe the field may actually be useful in efforts to unravel much of what has happened, the breaches of ethics can't be linguistically waived away with a magic word wand.
Back to this piece of yours I'd appreciate your thoughts on a Chinese research book I discovered going back to some of my early pandemic readings when I was taking in a lot of US foreign policy writings and official Chinese media stories. I read the following Foreign Affairs article in March, 2020. Foreign Affairs is perhaps the most influential foreign policy publication in the world, A Council on Foreign Relations production:
Past Pandemics Exposed China’s Weaknesses
The Current One Highlights Its Strengths
Foreign Affairs, March 27, 2020
https://web.archive.org/web/20200328050913/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2020-03-27/past-pandemics-exposed-chinas-weaknesses
The book I'm very interested in your thoughts about is:
Rural Health Care Delivery
Modern China from the Perspective of Disease Politics
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2013
('GET' .pdf download)
http://library.lol/main/DB87C08A174B849E1EB0476138787AED
It is a long book, I list some of the chapters and sections that I found most interesting in my stack that I introduce it on for those who don't have the time to read it in it's entirety they can use this as a guide to the essentials in it:
https://freedomfox.substack.com/p/the-devious-use-of-infectious-disease
The book introduces me to the concept of the Chinese "Double-Discipline" model of governance. External and Internal discipline. External being the heavy handed applied discipline of police and courts, authorities flexing muscle. Internal being the lighter touch of propaganda, indoctrination, re-education, mind managers.
The double-discipline model the book describes was useful to transform "The Sick Man of Asia" full of individualists and nationalists into a collectivist authoritarian governing system. Break an existing unruly population in hard with heavy external disciplinary actions. While indoctrinating the nation, particularly young, impressionable minds so they desire to place the needs of others, society above themselves, do as they are told because they believe it to be the right thing to do, virtuously, allows the heavy hand of external discipline to retreat into the background, high levels of voluntary compliance.
Disease Politics. Fear of disease proving to be most useful in fundamentally transforming a nation to adopt a collectivist authoritarian form of government, how consent is manufactured for totalitarianism. And the fact that Foreign Affairs, the CFR's mouthpiece referenced this book in March, 2020, as the entire free world shifted from a western liberal democratic response to pandemics, protecting individual civil rights and liberties into a global collectivist authoritarian/totalitarian response is more than a coincidence. With your background in China perhaps you can share more understanding on this than my reading alone has given me?
A brief answer to your concerns.
I was teaching an intro to Bioethics as part of intellectual survey course -- think of it as topics in philosophy. For most students, their first exposure. We covered environmental ethics in that course as well. The students already had some JS Mill and exposure to the Kant-Mill contrast, so that prepared them for readings from Alastair V. Campbell's Bioethics: The Basics. What you might assign to an AP high school class or a general ed college class.
Throughout that course, I was NOT enforcing the generic collectivism ideology.
You write:
"Fear of disease proving to be most useful in fundamentally transforming a nation to adopt a collectivist authoritarian form of government, how consent is manufactured for totalitarianism."
Exactly right, as I understand it.
But why limit this to China? In a book I have read but yet to review, and shame on me, Aaron Kheriaty, MD, of Human Flourishing (on Substack), has come out with an essential read: The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State. Kheriaty is concerned with the USA, with only passing references to China and parts of Western Europe.
China, as I mentioned in passing, seems to me now a fully actualized Biomedical Security State. This has nothing to do with public health. And is why I refused to return. No golden cage, please. I was a reasonably well-funded professor at the rank of full professor -- now, I am nobody. Loved my students, hated the system.
You write: "the entire free world shifted from a western liberal democratic response to pandemic" Forgetting Sweden? In fact, you are even ignoring Japan which did NOT mandate the vaccine. I've covered that here.
Nonetheless, the transformation of our Constitutional Republic into a kleptocratic Corporate-State with a rigorously defined caste-system has been going on -- in my opinion -- for some time. No doubt the CCP is facilitating and enjoying the process. But the USA is not yet a vassal state of China -- we have responsibility for our failures.
In my opinion, you are giving China too much credit for the global shift towards "collectivist authoritarian form[s] of government." Please do give certain EU states, and the WEF some credit as well. Please also give some credit to the bi-coastal globalists who figure prominently in American academia, business, and culture.
I need full and well-thought out, carefully written post to respond properly to your concerns. So it's time I got off my ass and discussed Kheriaty's The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State.
My final comments in this reply. Many of my former students (I truthfully think most) know what it is going on. They are not buying it. The CCP relentlessly messages because it has to -- but this quickly just becomes background noise, part of the environment. Powerful and insidious, nevertheless. But what do to? They graduate and face practical necessities -- they need employment. Open resistance, unless it is token gestures from privileged children of the elite, is not going to happen -- or happen often. It's a waiting game.
Thank you for your reply. I did not make clear in my comments that my understanding is much closer to what you describe. I do not lay our current world at the feet of China or China's mendacity. I see it as all home grown. I see the history of the Fascists among us, over a century, hidden among us, the Bush crime family syndicate a part of the the Rockefeller's Morgan's, Thyssens's Brown's, Harriman's, etc, a great many global industrialists and profiteers. Many who propped up Hitler at the same time they propped up Stalin, then propped up Mao and innumerable numbers of despots they put into power around the globe to serve their interests.
What I was linking to the book for was that I see it as a blueprint, a study guide for these malevolent forces that the CFR, Foreign Affairs was trying directing them to, when the entire response to disease was transformed from all pandemic plans that came before it. The blueprint. That's what the book serves as.
And I actually see the Chinese propaganda that came out early in 2020 as cautionary to us, telling us many truths, that we should avoid a transformation into authoritarianism in the middle of a crisis. That antivirals worked against CV, like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. The Chinese told us truth that our own governments did not. They gave fair warning. That we, our leaders didn't listen to. Chose not to listen to.
I do not forget Sweden, nor do I ignore Japan. But I know those societies are high trust societies that followed a different model of population control. The behaviorists studied all of the different "laboratories" that existed outside the main one they imposed. Florida was such a model to study willing compliance based on pure propaganda, "internal discipline," versus mandates, mask usage up and down on faces as the media reported fear, like a volume control, up and down. Even without threat of punishment, "external discipline."
Sweden is one of the most obedient societies out there, so is Japan. They need no mandates to gain high compliance, you just obey. The Nordic peoples are enculturated with obedience. Doesn't take a heavy hand. Same with the Japanese. That Internal discipline model is already a part of them. Mandates are external discipline. Fiercely independent and free people don't submit without external discipline. Sweden and Japan are not the homes of fiercely independent and free peoples. Much more collaborative and cooperative, collectivist societies to begin with.
I'll respectfully pass on fully endorsing your comments on Sweden and Japan. Back to Sweden, briefly: NO school lock-dows. No small businesses shutdowns. No demonization of the unvaxxed. Overall, far better results. Still to be admired. Sweden provides a natural history case study in comparison with the rest of the EU and Northern Europe. Even you don't feel they stack well against the USA, UK, etc.
For Asian societies with historically collectivism traditions, please do compare Japan to China or even South Korea. Better results. Why? In part, because Japan did allow for individual freedom, and did allow doctors to use whatever treatments deemed appropriate -- including the unmentionable ivermectin. With an aging population similar to the USA, Japan has about 1/3 our pop size but a ridiculously lower proportion of Covid deaths. No vaccine mandates. Lockdowns illegal under their constitution. Even as a collectivist society, which I will concede is obviously true on many levels (having lived in Japan three years), Japan proves your general point: it allowed for greater individual liberty and local decision-making over top-down control. The result: far better results.
I actually think both these nations help make your more general point, for what it is worth.
Yes, I see the value in their examples. And use them from time to time in conversations. But I also know that the differences in societal values are real. Western rogue "cowboy" persona's, rugged individualism aren't associated with either Japan or Sweden. No "Rebel Without a Cause" James Dean's, no Dukes of Hazzard Bo & Luke's making their way the only way the know how, just a little bit more than the law will allow cultural heroes.
This story is out of Iceland. Iceland did have mandates, unlike Sweden. But it shares many cultural and societal values with Sweden, having been under Swedish flag in its history. About a nurse in Iceland who defied the testing mandates highlights that observation. Nordic values of obedience:
Could terminate work contract of a nurse who denied taking rapid Covid tests
Iceland Monitor, March 9, 2023
https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2023/03/09/could_terminate_work_contract_of_a_nurse_who_denied/
"the nurse disobeyed company orders"
"she was required to obey such orders"
"employees' obedience to the employer's legal order is one of the primary duties of employees"
"an employee must submit to the mastery of his employer"
"work procedures must be obeyed"
"breach of a duty to obey or refusal by the employee to obey a directive"
"employee’s breach of the duty to obey"
"the employee’s refusal to obey is considered a serious failure"
"Obviously, obedience is considered to be an important part of running a business"
"obedience obligations are evidently to be regarded as critical to the operation of the policy"
"The Court finds that the breach of the duty of obedience by the nurse during the time in question constitutes a serious breach of the employment contract"
"The woman was then sentenced to pay the company Klíníkin 1.2 million ISK [$8,500 USD] in legal costs."
You could choose not to obey in Sweden without formal punishment. But those who didn't weren't looked up to as being brave or inspirational for others to disobey. They were tolerated. And that says nothing of the impact of "internal discipline" propaganda and indoctrination psychological campaigns. That make people "voluntarily" comply to do things that harm themselves. How voluntary is it when your mind has been farked with to make you "want" to self-harm? Like masks and jabs did. You know when you sign a contract, like to buy or sell property there is language saying that "i am not under any coercion or duress to sign this document." Knowing that those elements take away true free will. Applies to government coercion and duress, too. Or should.
China also published editorials and opinions that warned us about treating pandemics with political science instead of medical science. There were many editorials and opinion columns that followed Trump's declaration of a travel ban from China in late January, 2020. Travel bans known by medical science to be ineffective at preventing, slowing the spread of pandemic influenza and dangerous for civil liberties:
Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza
WHO, 2019
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf
A sample of China's early 2020 official editorials, essentially saying that changing governing systems in the middle of a crisis will make that crisis even worse. China, CCP China, said in so many words that in the middle of a crisis, "dance with the one who brung ya." Change governing systems in less stressful, dangerous times if you're really interested in protecting lives, not just changing political systems:
COVID-19 reveals countries’ differing capacity
Global Times, April 22, 2020
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202004/1186435.shtml
""The key to improving state capacity lies in how to boost the leading role of their own governance system, not breaking away or subverting the existing one." "[Western countries] are subject to different systems and traditions that impede them from directly copying China. Even if they do, the effect will be just the opposite."
China told us that we had antivirals that would be safe and effective to manage CV. Like Ivermectin and HCQ?:
Something's Not Right Here Folks
Gobal Times, February 8, 2020
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202002/1178873.shtml
"Medical researchers are already discovering that certain existing anti-viral medications seem to be effective against this Corona virus."
"...whether or not a person specifically does have the Corona virus or some other viral bug presenting as pneumonia, the treatment is the same supportive treatment anyway."
China asserted that their people are actually more free than the US and west because they do as they are told willingly. Mind you, this is only after seventy years of substantial indoctrination, following their brutal crackdown on individual liberty-minded Chinese, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions during Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. China, as the link I have in my Substack piece on political infectious disease shows, practices "double discipline" governance. External discipline - police force and Internal discipline - behavioral science. How an entire population can be transformed to prefer an authoritarian model, one that makes them happy owning nothing and eating bugs:
Finding fault with China a symptom of West’s ideological crisis
Global Times, March 11, 2020
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202003/1182264.shtml
"Chinese people are willing to endure a period of inconvenience and limits on their travel. They know these are necessary measures that will work, and they don't feel like being subjected to a so-called autocracy."
FF - Is that a better model of governance?
China proclaimed that their model of governance was better at handling a crisis. Better. That's a subjective word. If by better they meant that in a time of crisis a population will want a firm hand of leadership and their authoritarian model provides what the people want, then that could be a plausible definition of 'better.'
But if by better the measurement of actual deaths resulting from a crisis, well, that's a different story. A review of the history of deaths resulting from government policies, policies believed by government officials to improve public health and safety:
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.TAB1.6.GIF
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.FIG1.7.GIF
Of course, we see the statistics of deaths attributed to CV as reported by world governments. Knowing that there have been many different criteria applies to determine how many deaths were from CV; most captured deaths *with* CV. With that statistical noise impossible to make a meaningful comparison all we have to measure with a meaningful degree of confidence is excess deaths. And by that measure, the nations that imposed the fewest restrictions, had the lowest vaccinations rates, followed the least authoritarian form of pandemic crisis governance have the lowest excess death rates. Charts look remarkably similar to the charts found in the 1994 Univ. of Hawaii report on death by government link above.
The sharp turn into authoritarian/totalitarian governance by the US and western liberal freedom-oriented nations came at a very high price. A predictable and predicted explosion in excess deaths. Which means our authorities knew. Or should have known. The science, even the political science that the UH report reflects, demonstrates how much more deadly authoritarian/totalitarian regimes are compared to government that respects freedom, individual rights. China was wrong about their model being better. And our nations abandoned the model that we do best trying to copy China with slightly less oppressive measures.
You write: "The sharp turn into authoritarian/totalitarian governance by the US and western liberal freedom-oriented nations came at a very high price. "
I'm not sure it was a sharp turn. I think it has been in makings for decades. I will try to cover in full-length post.
As for the very high price, we are still paying it. Unacceptable Jessica shares with us the essay "There Was No Pandemic." https://jessicar.substack.com/cp/131710953
To summarize without nuance this fine essay, we experienced or should have the equivalent of a bad but not horrifically bad flu season. It became a pandemic because that allowed for a power-grab. Not just by national governments, but by the would-be global governmental organizations. Many based in philanthropy, the EU, or the UN.
So again, respectfully, you are giving China too much credit.
Please refer to the comment I just wrote to your previous reply. We are more in agreement as to origins than your reply conveys. Just because I didn't make that the central part of my messages to you doesn't mean I'm not aware of it. I was focused on the nuances of China that you know, not the macro global forces that are driving this.
As for Chinese governance and media models, China practices "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" as they call it. Implicit in that phraseology is that other nations and regions contemplated in future Great Reset/Agenda 2030 constructs is the US practicing Socialism with American Characteristics. And I'd say we are well on our way. Some reading as a primer by what is meant by Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Followed by a description of what media looks like in a socialist with Chinese characteristics configuration.
Beijing Review, August 5, 2022
https://www.bjreview.com/Opinion/Governance/202208/t20220805_800302971.html
Office for The Marxist Theory Research and Construction Project, January 15, 2018
https://archive.org/details/basics-of-the-theoretical-system-of-socialism-with-chinese-characteristics
The Economist, June 26, 2021
https://archive.fo/8hDjH
Mass Media in China:
(apologies for Wiki, but I sometimes use it as a concise jumping point to other more authoritative sources)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_in_China
"All media continues to follow regulations imposed by the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP on subjects considered taboo by the CCP, including but not limited to the legitimacy of the party, pro-democracy movements, human rights in Tibet, the Uyghur genocide, pornography, and the banned religious topics, such as the Dalai Lama and Falun Gong. Hong Kong, which has maintained a separate media ecosystem than mainland China, is also witnessing increasing self-censorship"
"In the 1990s and early 2000s, the ways in which the CCP operated—especially the introduction of reforms aimed at decentralizing power—spurred a period of greater media autonomy in several ways:
The growth of "peripheral"—local and some regional—media. This trend decentralized and dampened CCP oversight. In general, the greater the distance is between reporters and media outlets, and Beijing and important provincial capitals, the greater their leeway.
A shift toward administrative and legal regulation of the media and away from more fluid and personal oversight. CCP efforts to rely on regulations rather than whim to try to control the media—as evidenced by the dozens of directives set forth when the State Press and Publications Administration was created in 1987, and by new regulations in 1990 and 1994—probably were intended to tighten CCP control, making it a matter of law rather than personal relationships. In fact, however, these regulations came at a time when official resources were being stretched more thinly and individual officials were becoming less willing—and less able—to enforce regulations.
Vicissitudes of media acceptability. Since the early 1990s, the types of media coverage deemed acceptable by the regime have risen sharply. Growing uncertainties about what is permissible and what is out of bounds sometimes work to the media's interests. Often, however, these uncertainties encourage greater self-censorship among Chinese journalists and work to the benefit of the CCP's media control apparatus."
"Under Xi Jinping
Since Xi Jinping became in 2012 the CCP general secretary, censorship has been significantly stepped up. During a visit to Chinese state media, Xi stated that "party-owned media must hold the family name of the party" and that the state media "must embody the party's will, safeguard the party's authority". Under Xi, investigative journalism has been driven almost to extinction within China.
In 2018, as part of an overhaul of CCP and government bodies, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) was renamed into the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) with its film, news media and publications being transferred to the Central Propaganda Department. Additionally, the control of China Central Television (CCTV, including its international edition, China Global Television), China National Radio (CNR) and China Radio International (CRI) were transferred to the newly established China Media Group (CMG) under the control of the Central Propaganda Department"
"The CCP has used the COVID-19 pandemic as cover to further reduce media freedoms in China. According to Radio Free Asia, in December 2022, the National Press and Publication Administration issued a directive stating that in order to obtain credentials as a professional journalist, they must pass a national exam and "...must support the leadership of the Communist Party of China, conscientiously study, publicize and implement Xi Jinping's thoughts on the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics, resolutely implement the party's theory, line, principles and policies, and adhere to the correct political direction and public opinion guidance.""
"The number of newspapers in mainland China has increased from 43—virtually all CCP newspapers—in 1968 to 382 in 1980 and more than 2,200 today. By one official estimate, there are now more than 7,000 magazines and journals in the country. The number of copies of daily and weekly newspapers and magazines in circulation grew fourfold between the mid-1960s and the mid-to-late 1980s, reaching 310 million by 1987."
"The diversity in mainland Chinese media is partly because most state media outlets no longer receive heavy subsidies from the government, and are expected to cover their expenses through commercial advertising. They can no longer merely serve as mouthpieces of the government, but also need to attract advertising through programming that people find attractive. While the government issues directives defining what can be published, it does not prevent, and in fact encourages outlets to compete for viewers and advertising."
"The internet in China is heavily censored which limits public access to international media and non-sanctioned Chinese media. The main bodies for internet control are the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, a CCP body established in 2014, and the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is under the Cyberspace Affairs Commission. Additionally, the Ministry of Public Security's Cyber Police force is responsible for internal security, regulating online content, and investigation of Internet fraud, scams, pornography, separatism, and extremism."
"Communist Party control
The media and communications industry in mainland China is controlled by the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP. The principal mechanism to force media outlets to comply with the CCP's requests is the vertically organized nomenklatura system of cadre appointments, and includes those in charge of the media industry. The CCP utilizes a wide variety of tools to maintain control over news reporting including "direct ownership, accreditation of journalists, harsh penalties for online criticism, and daily directives to media outlets and websites that guide coverage of breaking news stories." National Radio and Television Administration oversees the administration of state-owned enterprises involved in the radio and television, reporting directly to the Central Propaganda Department."
"- It continues to make clear that criticism of certain fundamental policies—such as those on PRC sovereignty over territories under Republic of China administration and Tibet and on Hong Kong's future in the wake of the transfer of Hong Kong sovereignty on July 1, 1997 —are off limits.
- It holds weekly meetings with top newspaper editors to direct them as to what news items they want focused upon and which stories they want to go unreported. The controversial closure of the Freezing Point journal was generally unreported in mainland China due to government orders.
- It has maintained a system of uncertainty surrounding the boundaries of acceptable reporting, encouraging self-censorship. One media researcher has written that "it is the very arbitrariness of this control regime that cows most journalists into more conservative coverage."
FF - Again, I'm curious about your thoughts on my understanding of China informed by this type of awareness?
1. The CCP messaging is relentless. As I mentioned. At the same time, a shocking number of people have work-arounds -- ways of getting news and information from outside China. For obvious reasons, I will not describe those work-arounds here.
2. Please be careful about confusing or conflating the desire of CPP for total domination with the various local realities in mainland China. I am not denying the effectiveness of the CCP in general terms, or their control over established outlets. But there is also desperation to their efforts. They continually broadcast and permeate -- and the more they do so, the more they are tuned out. Many people have learned to put a facade of consent, and from behind that, go about their business. The Party on some level knows this -- but they keep doing more of the same. It's no longer working for many younger people. I'm not promising you a revolution. But I stand by my earlier remarks in the post:
The students were neither zombies nor robots nor brain-washed ideologues. They had their biases – as we all do – but were generally both curious and critically open-minded. Likewise, they more typically tolerated or even tuned out the constant CCP messaging. True believers or mindless repeaters were very few and far in between.
That's the reality I experienced on the ground.
3. The fantasy that the CCP truly controls all is, I think, in part confession by projection about what our own power elites -- our own globalists -- wish on the American people. Recall Gates and Fauci praising the extreme Chinese covid-lockdowns. The data was already in that these did not work. Only Sweden truthfully got it right -- although Denmark, Finland, and others did some reasonably timely course-reverals. My concern is finally not China, but the USA.
As is mine. You are not in China any longer because the biosecurity state it has begun is too much for you to sacrifice and work through. Your students, even those who are not brain-washed ideologues, those who have learned to put a facade of consent on to go about their business still must obey the biosecurity state, they have no out like you did. They may not like it, but unless something is done to change the system of governance they submit. Or die. And looking at how Americans went about the pandemic I'm not sure the same human being will act any differently if/when the stakes of disobedience are the same here in the US as they are in China. They may know none of it is right, put on a facade of consent, but unless more of our countrymen refuse to put on a facade of consent the facade will become the reality of living.
And, as I've stated, Sweden is hardly a model of freedom. Sweden mandates the collection of every single citizen's DNA, the first nation to have a national biometric database. And they are a very obedient culture. Internal discipline is strong in the Nordics. Consent is manufactured through propaganda and indoctrination of what a good citizen does. No need for mandates when most all willingly comply. If being subjected to very sophisticated psychological manipulation and coercion is considered willing just because there's no risk of arrest or fine for not going along with the program.
I do find the national biometric database to be hugely disturbing. I also don't see how it eventually escapes national control -- if it has not already. A Swedish citizen might well -- rightly or wrongly -- believe they can trust their government. But it is madness to trust the WHO, many other super/international organizations, and for the that matter, the other governments which are known to collect bio-data for military as well as surveillance purposes -- China in the forefront.
Truth is, by sharing the book out of China on disease politics I was hoping you'd be curious to explore it and share with me an assessment of the tale it is telling, what there is to learn from it. Because I always believe there is something I can learn from my adversaries. I listened to Radio Moscow as a child, living in Miami and the broadcast from Havana reached my home. My first exposure to propaganda from adversaries. I was curious what they had to say about my home, my country. I even watched TASS evening news that was rebroadcast nightly on the local PBS station and would read Pravda in the local library when I'd go there on family nights. Not because I was an aspiring Marxist or lover of the USSR. But because I wanted to know how they thought. And I could tell from my own lived experiences what they were saying was untrue, partial truths, out-of-context narratives that served their purposes. That experience in grade school actually inoculated me to many forms of propaganda. Including from our own media. And I'll note that the grievances and narratives spun by the Soviet propaganda machine are *exactly* the same grievances and narratives we hear from D's and on our own media today, how racist, sexist, greedy, selfish, crime-infested, sick our nation is, all said by the USSR, verbatim, 40-50 years ago. It's almost as if the D's and media are actively trying to make the US into what the propaganda narrative has been all these years.
So I am genuinely curious about a China-focused informed analysis of the 2013 book and the official media and editorials they published in early 2020, how it fits into the Foreign Affairs (CFR) piece, agenda. As a blueprint? I don't see China as the greatest threat. The greatest threat is our own political, corporate and cultural leaders, media, right here in the good 'old USA. Other Americans. China, from my best understanding, just wants a trading partner that allows it to realize the most profit. China's CCP is really just an overhaul of their old family dynastic system, like regional mafia's that came together under a handy ideological system given the name "Communism" but really operates as a sort of Apalachin Meeting of mobsters divvying up the spoils of the rackets they have going around their nation. Call it communism to be recognized as legitimate on the global stage, but really just gangster families given respectable titles and honorifics. China's leaders just want profit, they don't care about any 'ism." If Trump was a good business partner they'd do business with him. If western liberal capitalist nations were good business partners they'd do business with them. They aren't our problem. They do them. Just want us to stay out of their internal affairs. It's the Marxists/Fascists/Oligarchs/Political mobster crime family syndicates in the US who are our problem and our biggest threat. From where I sit.
Indeed about the WHO. When "Stalin's Nanny" Susan Michie was named the WHO's Chief Behavioural Scientist and Wellcome Trust's Jeremy Farrar, WEF "Zero-Covid" founding member who resigned from the UK's SPI pandemic task force because it wasn't totalitarian enough for his liking, desired the CCP's weld-them-in-their-homes lockdown model, his only complaint that the windows of those locked down were allowed to be open and their pleas for help and food could be heard is now the WHO's Chief Scientist. Not good signs of any measure of respect for free choice, individualism coming from the WHO in future health emergencies they declare.
As to the work-arounds I understand them to be cat and mouse game. As work-arounds are created when they become too popular and begin to threaten the information control and break out, viral, they are shut down. And new ones are created. A never-ending cycle, trying to stay one step ahead of authorities.
An interview with Vladimir Putin I remember coming across many years ago asked him about what he thought the USSR did right and wrong. He said that the USSR's heavy-handed control of independent thought was wrong. That families spying on families was over-the-top. That even friends venting over drinks in homes with one another wasn't worth security state crackdowns. He recognized that people are people and will always need to vent about government, blow off steam, get mad at leaders about this or that. He said that only if dissent became an actual threat to the state should it be addressed, cracked down on. If the streets became too full of protesters, if groups began to organize in serious opposition to authority that was when authorities needed to move in and remove the threat. His lesson he took from the Soviet Union and shared with other global leaders.
That is what I see China as practicing in its cat-and-mouse game. And what we are seeing even in western liberal democracies. What the crackdown on Trump/MAGA is an offshoot of, an attempt to remove the most serious threat to the global authoritarians. Putin's advice: Bitch all you want. Just don't try to actually do something about it.
Congrats on breaking free from academia. It was once a noble institution, but it's been so thoroughly corrupted that I'm not sure any good can come from it anymore. I can see the future going one of two ways -- either a new dark age or a new Renaissance powered by independent scholars on the internet. Substack gives me some hope for the latter vision.
Some excellent content on Substack. As for the decline of American universities, what I learn terrifies me. Heather Mac Donald's (2018) The Diversity Delusion was bad enough. I have just started her recent (2023) When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. I wish it were a rant or scree. Instead, she documents painstakingly case after case. It reads like a horror story. Mind-blowingly bad. Standardized testing for Medical School, Engineering, and more now being discarded. The lack of science and math skills, no apparent problem.
I am so happy NOT to be part of American higher ed. In terms of intellectual freedom, I honestly believe I had more in China. But the problem is not confined to higher ed. The vanishing of challenging math courses and advanced placement courses from public high schools in the USA is deeply disturbing. We are competing globally with China, Finland, India, Lithuania, etc. They are not dragging everyone down to the level of the weakest performing members. Our national solutions are what? To print money and to make-up jobs with which to employ unqualified -- often, highly unqualified --people.
At the current rate of events, medical tourism will soon become a necessary option for middle-class and working-class Americans seeking both professional and affordable healthcare.
Btw, do have a look at https://oceanofpdf.com/
Our national solutions are what? To print money and to make-up jobs with which to employ unqualified -- often, highly unqualified --people.
Yeah, that's about it. Eventually reality will win, and it won't be pretty. We're starting to see little cracks appear, but most people are still in denial. Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to be able to fix things piece by piece. The whole edifice has to come down, and then we can rebuild.
Ocean of PDF is pretty sweet. I love anything that liberates information.
For now _ need time and space to absorb and reflect _
exceptionally powerful images. Thank you, DH.
Good article. So much that we hear about China is just propaganda, Nice to see an alternative pespective that shatters some of these fallacies. Linking today @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
The CCP strikes me as bad as they say. But people are people, like everywhere else. Not everyone in China is zombie marching to the beat of the CCP -- far from it, even though the music never stops.