We Interrupt This European Crisis to Bring You the Chinese Collapse

The global economy rests largely on the US, Europe, and China. Both Europe and China are in the middle of serious economic difficulties, which are not fully appreciated by most outside analysts. In general, most of the attention has been directed toward the European debt and banking crises. But given how much of global demand for commodities has originated in China recently, it does not pay to ignore the 200 tonne dragon in the room.

Reformed Broker: We Interrupt this European Crisis to Bring You the Chinese Recession

Atlantic: 5 Reasons Why China May Already Be in a Recession

EconBrowser: China and the Global Slowdown

Good Bad and Ugly of Emerging Markets: Who Tyler Durden thinks you can trust

Brian Wang is still bullish on China

If you are an investor, it does not pay to get too complacent.

China's Great Divide

China's economy is stumbling currently, and China's leaders and people are divided as to how best to proceed for the benefit of the Chinese nation and people at large.

On the one hand, you have the modernists who are doing everything they can to perpetuate China's recent history of rapid growth. Such modernists include the leaders in China's CCP responsible for trade and economic growth.

On the other side, you have the neo-Maoists -- throwbacks to the age of Mao, perpetual poverty, and mass starvation. This group is represented in the politburo by leaders of China's security and military forces. Their champion was Bo Xilai, the fallen former boss of Chongqing -- the man who aspired to take over total leadership of China.

The hyper-centralist leftists among China's population who backed Bo and his cohorts within top CCP leadership, tend to frequent bookshops and websites such as Utopia. This group is currently somewhat downhearted, but at the same time they are totally unrepentant and unreflective -- completely lacking insight.

More than 35 years since his death, the man who led the communist takeover of China is still a hero at Utopia, a bookshop in north-west Beijing.

Until recently, the dedicated band of leftists who ran Utopia and its website from hard-to-find sixth floor premises had a modern-day figure to look up to, someone they hoped would bring about a return to the policies of the Mao era and halt the country's economic reforms.

"China is now very much a polarised society, where the rich people take one end and the poor and powerless take the other.

"These people, they've kidnapped the country politically and economically. They hold these monopolies over China's political power ... They control the public opinion by state ownership and the public broadcasters and print media.

"It takes poor people to fight against these people and push for change. They can't wait and expect the change to fall from the sky."

While Mr Fan can fairly be described as belonging to the political fringe in China, Utopia is often cited as one of the most prominent of a series of leftist websites. _Utopia Dashed

It is instructive to see utopian leftists extolling the virtue of corrupt thugs such as Bo Xilai, as if Bo were some type of selfless saviour to the masses. The Utopia website was said to receive a half million visitors a day, which is not so many in terms of the total Chinese population. But in terms of China's intelligentsia, such fringe websites may be able to claim a significant following. Time will tell.

It is clear that for all of its supposed homogeneity, China is a land divided among itself, with much potential for dissent and conflict. From the Falun Gong to the neo-Maoists to the pro-west liberals to the corrupt status quo (perhaps the largest single group), the middle kingdom would seem to be a land in the middle of disruptive and potentially dangerous change, regardless of the direction it eventually goes.

An American Justice System Gone Insane?

More on Trayvon Martin Case

... he witnessed a black male, wearing a dark-colored “hoodie” on top of a white or Hispanic male and throwing punches “MMA (mixed martial arts) style.” He stated that he yelled out to the two individuals that he was going to call the police. He then heard a “pop.” He stated that after hearing the “pop,” he observed the person he had previously observed on top of the other person (the black male wearing the “hoodie”) laid out on the grass. _Bob Owens

Trayvon's autopsy revealed bloody knuckles as if he had beaten someone viciously, and drugs in his blood and urine.

Daily Mail
Zimmerman's scalp was abraded as if the back of his head had hit a hard surface.

Broken Nose
Zimmerman's nose had been broken, as if someone had sucker-punched him in the face. Both eyes were blackened.

The evidence is consistent with Zimmerman's initial testimony, supporting the original judgment of the police not to place charges against the neighborhood watch captain, who was apparently looking out for his neighborhood which had been repeatedly victimised by young punks.

Trayvon's chest wound revealed powder marks, consistent with being shot at relatively close range. There was a single shot.

A brief confession by Al Fin: If Al Fin were tracking someone down to kill them, he would initially shoot them at a distance no closer than 5 to 10 metres, centre mass, in order the stop or slow them. The initial shot would be followed in close succession by shots aimed at the head and upper chest. Were Al Fin to set out to kill someone, he would not allow his target to beat him to a bloody pulp first, nor would he allow the target to get close enough so that shots would leave powder burns on the target.

It is clear that Zimmerman did not intend to shoot or kill anyone that night. Only when Trayvon made himself a credible threat to the life of Zimmerman ("now you're gonna die" etc) did the shooter fire his weapon, apparently as a last resort.

The prosecutor who brought charges should be dismissed and charged with prosecutorial misconduct. The law should exist in the background, to be used only as necessary. The law should not be used as a political tool, as it is apparently being used in the Trayvon case.

US Demographic Change Alters More than Ethnicity

The US has passed a milestone: From now on, the majority of births in the US will be to non-European women. Highest birthrates in the US occur among non-white Hispanics. Black American women also have higher birthrates than do Euro American women. Birthrates among the much smaller groups of disparate Asian populations in the US vary considerably.

Wall Street Journal

For the first time in US history, whites of European ancestry account for less than half of newborn children, marking a demographic tipping point . . . _WSJ

This demographic tipping point changes a lot more than just the ethnic makeup of the US population. Because different population groups tend to arise from different cultures, holding different customs and values, the political and economic behaviour of the new majority is likely to tip the overall economic and political behaviour of the US significantly.

Perhaps it would be instructive to look at the differences between the populations of Northern Europe and Southern Europe. While both the North and the South are governed by some form of welfare state, Northern Europeans tend to be more naturally austere and thrifty, whereas Southern Europeans tend to take like more from day to day, enjoying the warmer sunnier climate, the wine, the Med.

Greece is becoming the first to suffer for its peoples' inherent lack of austerity and thrift. As Greece's economy crumbles, a regime of austerity would allow the country's economy to recover its footing -- but the politics of Greece and the natural inclination of its people will not tolerate austerity enforced from above. And as for austerity from within -- the people simply do not have it in them.

The same is likely to prove true for Spain, Italy, Portugal, as the economic crisis worsens for each in its turn. Their economies could use some austerity to allow them to recover and rebuild, but the people are not likely to stand for it. Perhaps it was the lack of inherent austerity in the people which allowed the situation to approach its denouement.

In the demographic transition of the US, we see populations of innate austerity giving way to rapidly growing populations which lack this natural thrift and planning sense. Given these changes, we can expect the trend toward larger government and less personal savings, planning, and responsibility, to accelerate rapidly.

Regardless of the best intentions, and all of the other strengths which may be brought to a nation, people cannot help who they are. If a majority contains a flaw which will prove to be fatal within a particular type of political and economic system -- say a democratic welfare state -- then events will work themselves out much like water finding its way to the sea.

There are many ways to find one's way to "the truth", but at the end of every chapter in life, the real world will have had its say.

Some changes are abrupt and unpredictable. Other changes -- such as the associated alterations of society that are likely to come with a changing demographic -- occur very slowly. And while these alterations may be predictable, they can take place at a rate which allows them to be easily ignored, if the mainstream of government, media, and academia does not wish the population to be bothered with troublesome implications.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst. And expect something somewhere unpredictably in between.

Why Europe Can't Compete

“The fact that energy is cheap in the US, and probably will be for a long time, is changing the game,” Mr Clamadieu said. “Electricity’s getting more and more expensive in Europe, and some of the decisions that have been announced regarding nuclear energy production will certainly move the price in the wrong direction. For industry this is really a concern.” __Financial Times _via_GWPF

Industrialists and businessmen and women from Germany to France to the UK are becoming worried about the anti-energy policies of their own governments. European business and manufacturing are being put at a distinct disadvantage because of the energy starvationist and carbon hysteric green policies that are dominating Europe at this time.

Germany accelerated its withdrawal from atomic power following last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, while Belgium is considering phasing plants out sooner than expected. In France, the new Socialist president, François Hollande, has promised to cut reliance on nuclear energy from 75 per cent of electricity production to 50 per cent.

The issue of energy costs is acute in France because the country is desperately trying to improve its industrial competitiveness to make up ground lost to Germany.

“The debate on energy is a bit difficult to understand for someone who wants to have a rational approach,” Mr Clamadieu said. “It’s very difficult to replace nuclear produced electricity, which costs about €40 per megawatt hour, with a wind turbine put far away in the sea, which costs €200 per megawatt hour.” _GWPF

The convergence of politics and faux environmentalism is never rational. When politicians and greens get together, watch out.

The New Communism: Let's Kill 1 Billion People This Time Around

20th Century communism only killed 100 million people. But the new communism has set its sights much higher. As one of "New Communism's" leaders told an Occupy Wall Street crowd in Zucotti Park NYC: "Try again. Fail again. Fail better." Or put more accurately, "Fail bigger."

Occupy Zombies

The mainstream skankstream media would have you believe that the occupy zombie movement (OWS) originates in the grass roots of disaffected populations, particularly the young. But in truth, new communism movements such as OWS originate in the sinecured halls of unlimited hubris, academia. New communism is a denial of history and an elevation of an ever-malleable utopian fantasy as the proper standard of human effort and behaviour.

The communist idea or “hypothesis” is then placed beyond empirical refutation. “The eternal idea of the [Chinese] Cultural revolution survives its defeat in socio-historical reality,” insists Zizek, while for Badiou, “failure is nothing more than the history of the proof of the hypothesis.” Under scrutiny, it becomes clear that we are not dealing with a communist “hypothesis” at all—that would involve testing and the possibility of falsification—but rather a communist dogma, and the relation of the new communists to that dogma is fundamentally religious, marked by piety and faith, and not at all critical.

...the refusal to face up to the criminal record of actually existing communism as a social system, let alone stare into that abyss until one’s politics and theory are utterly reshaped by it, tells us that the new communism remains within the orbit of leftist totalitarianism. _NewCommunism

But the situation is far more dire than the author of the piece suggests. The movement is not a simple quasi-religious political dogma. New communism has merged with the faux environmental religion of Luddite greenism, to form a far deadlier real-world synthesis than would have been possible had the movement stuck to mere politics and political economy.

With the addition of greenism, new communism is now entrusted with the task of saving the world. Not the human world, but rather the natural world, without humans. Humans are expendable, disposable, in this new synthetic movement.

The largely unstated goal of the great green movement of the late 20th and early 21st century has always been a drastic pruning of the human tree. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) is the happy face pasted over this ghoulish enterprise. According to VHEMT, it is the moral duty of humans to go extinct as a species, voluntarily.

Another website, Dieoff.org, portrays a great human dieoff as a fait accompli -- something that is inevitable and imminent. The basis of the human dieoff in this case is a catastrophic collapse of civilisation caused by resource depletion.

But it is carbon hysteria -- catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) -- which is the greatest ally of "the new communism" movement, by its very ubiquitous, state-sponsored nature. CAGW is everywhere, from K-12 to post-grad, from the tabloids to the science journals, from the White House to the UN. CAGW permeates modern societies like a malignant cancer. Not a real cancer, actually, but a hysterical, imaginary cancer that carries the force of reality like a voodoo zombie curse that kills.

Under the spell of carbon hysteria CAGW, governments are empowered to seize, regulate, and prohibit virtually anything that can be portrayed as an agent of climate change. Wielding the hammer of CAGW, nothing is out of reach of the state-sponsored zombies of collective mind clones.

So what is the bottom line? Does the new alliance -- the new communist faux environmental alliance -- really want to kill 1 billion people this time? No. The preferred number is between 6 billion and 6.9 billion humans, to be killed or otherwise made to disappear. Most hard-core lefty-Luddite dieoff.orgy greens would like to see the global human population reduced to around 100 million, from the current number of about 7 billion. But there are some who would show mercy, and settle for a 90% reduction to about 700 million surviving humans.

We should not make the mistake of assuming that the new lefty-Luddite green dieoff.orgy movement is simply the new enemy of right wing politics, or of the capitalist upper class. This movement-of-many-faces is the enemy of the human future. To these zombies, humans have had their chance and have failed. It is now a zombie world, to do with as the zombies choose.

Hope for the best. But prepare for the worst.

Taxing Success and Subsidising Failure

Sometimes the difference between a struggling national economy and one that is prospering, is how easy governments make it to start a business, or to enter an occupation.

If governments make it too expensive or difficult to work, start a business, or perform a service for money, the amount of economic activity in that society is bound to suffer. YouTube Video via IJ.org

When an activity is over-taxed or over-regulated, you will see far less of that activity. When an activity is subsidised, you will see more of the activity.

Strangely, many governments overtax and overregulate business and job formation, while subsidising freeloading and dishonest claims.

If you understand how such societies are shooting themselves in the foot (or even the head), you may want to hope for the best -- but prepare for the worst!

Make the Bad Lady Shut Up, Mommy! Make Her Shut UP!!!

IN an excellent demonstration of the motto of leftist higher education: "Free speech for me but not for thee," the Chronicle of Higher Education has fired a blogger who was paid to contribute a contrary viewpoint. She was fired, "logically enough," at least in the eyes of a leftist academic, for publishing a contrary viewpoint.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has fired our former editorial-page colleague, Naomi Schaefer Riley, for a blog posting on the Chronicle's website that offended 6,500 professors. Well, they're not all professors yet, but they are members of what calls itself the "higher-education community," for which the Chronicle is its trade paper. As best we can make out, the Chronicle's editor, Liz McMillen, fired Naomi Riley for doing what she was hired to do—provide a conservative point of view about current events in academe alongside the paper's roster of mostly not-conservative academic bloggers. _WSJ

Ms. Schaefer Riley tells the story from her point of view:

Recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a cover story called "Black Studies: 'Swaggering Into the Future,'" in which the reporter described how "young black-studies scholars . . . are less consumed than their predecessors with the need to validate the field or explain why they are pursuing doctorates in their discipline." The "5 Up-and-Coming Ph.D. Candidates" described in the piece's sidebar "are rewriting the history of race." While the article suggested some are skeptical of black studies as a discipline, the reporter neglected to quote anyone who is.

Like me. So last week, on the Chronicle's "Brainstorm" blog (where I was paid to be a regular contributor), I suggested that the dissertation topics of the graduate students mentioned were obscure at best and "a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap," at worst.

For instance, the author of a dissertation on the history of black midwifery began her research, she told the Chronicle, because she "noticed that nonwhite women's experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature." Another graduate student blamed the housing crisis in America on institutional racism. And a third argued that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and John McWhorter have "played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them."

The reaction to my blog post ranged from puerile to vitriolic. The graduate students I mentioned and the senior faculty who advise them at Northwestern University accused me (in guest blogs posted by the Chronicle editors) of bigotry and cowardice. The former wrote that "in a bid to not be 'out-niggered' [their word] by her right-wing cohort, Riley found some black women graduate students to beat up on." (I confess I don't actually know what that means.) One fellow blogger (and hundreds of commenters) called my post "racist."

Gina Barreca, a teacher of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut, composed a poem mocking me. (It begins "A certain white chick—Schaefer Riley/ decided to do something wily.") MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry spewed a four-minute rant about my post, invoking the memory of Trayvon Martin and accusing me of "small-mindedness."

Scores of critics on the site complained that I had not read the dissertations in full before daring to write about them—an absurd standard for a 500-word blog post. A number of the dissertations aren't even available. Which didn't seem to stop the Chronicle reporter, though. And 6,500 academics signed a petition online demanding that I be fired.

At first, the Chronicle stood its ground, suggesting that my post was an "invitation to debate." But that stance lasted for little more than a weekend. In a note that reads like a confession at a re-education camp, the Chronicle's editor, Liz McMillen announced her decision on Monday to fire me: "We've heard you," she tells my critics. "And we have taken to heart what you said. We now agree that Ms. Riley's blog posting did not meet The Chronicle's basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles."

When I asked Ms. McMillen whether the poem by fellow blogger Ms. Barreca, for instance, lived up to such standards, she said they were "reviewing" the other content on the site. So far, however, that blogger has not been fired. Other ad hominem attacks against me seem to have passed editorial muster as well. _Naomi Schaefer Riley_in_WSJ

Member of "Band of Brothers" Murdered, Wife Raped in Home Invasion

One day after a home invasion and brutal assault of a 90 year old 101st Airborne D-Day invasion veteran, 20 year old Tyrone Woodfork was found driving the automobile that had belonged to the former paratrooper and his wife -- who died in the hospital after being sexually assaulted by a home invader. The former member of "The Band of Brothers," the 101st Airborne Division who participated in the D-Day invasion and survived WWII, died later of his injuries sustained in the home invasion.

Bob Strait, a 90-year-old Tulsa resident, died on Friday, and a medical examiner is determining his cause of death, News On 6 reports.

He was injured March 13 when, police say, Tyrone Woodfork, 20, entered the house and attacked, allegedly beating and sexually assaulted Strait’s 85-year-old wife, Nancy Strait, who died two days later. The couple had been married for 65 years.

Bob Strait was a World War II paratrooper who took part in the D-Day invasion as part of the 101st Airborne Division, where he was awarded a Bronze Star. _PJM_quoting_FoxNews

... Woodfork was arrested a day after the incident when he was spotted driving around in Strait’s vehicle, a Tulsa Police Department spokesman told FoxNews.com.

Woodfork was booked into the Tulsa County Jail on March 15 and is being held on charges of first degree murder, first degree burglary, armed robbery and assault with a dangerous weapon. _FoxNews

It is too early to know whether this crime can be added to the "Trayvon Avenger" series. Probably not, since even without the Trayvon tragedy, such travesties occur all too often. Trayvon is becoming little more than a trendy excuse for very bad behaviour, in certain circles. Thank you, President Obama, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, and the long list of professional rabble and race baiting opportunists.

Trayvon Avenger Mobs Piling On

In just two months, there were at least 14 known assaults — some clearly attempted murder — perpetrated by black mobs against 15 white victims that have been tied to a widely shared desire to avenge the death of Trayvon Martin.

This list of brutality does not include the highly publicized beating of Matthew Owens in Alabama that may have been the result of a long-running neighborhood feud, nor does it include the shooting of an unoccupied Sanford, Fla., police car at the height of racial tensions before George Zimmerman was arrested. It also does not include alleged vandalism and threats that have been issued, such as the death threats in Wisconsin plastered on neighborhood mailboxes and a sticker featuring a picture of Trayvon Martin and the word “Revenge,” as well as another that said “Kill Whitey.”

The fact that Martin’s admitted shooter, George Zimmerman, is multi-racial indicates the attacks are merely an excuse to resurrect deeply buried grudges and act out on them with violence.

The media that doctored evidence to give the incident a racist spin, the politicians that echoed it when they saw a political advantage in parroting disinformation, and the racial grievance industry that fanned the flames of racial discord have downplayed the incidents of violence they nurtured.

This is far from over, and the worst of the deep-seated, irrational hatred, blame-shifting, and violent sentiments resemble nothing less than the psychosis that undermines the Palestinian cause and keeps them from ever rising above poverty and out of hate. America has balkanized fiercely thanks to a disreputable media and dishonorable “leaders,” and a Pandora’s box has cracked open as a result.

The vitriol towards George Zimmerman and the call for riots if the courts don’t rule the mob’s way are heavily documented on social media sites like Twitter. Threads for #Trayvon, #TrayvonMartin, #Justice4Trayvon, and #Zimmerman reveal a raw and untouched desire for violent retribution and the most brutal lynching fantasies directed at Zimmerman, sprinkled with naked hatred of other races.

These documented assaults that have made national media are not likely to be the only violent hate crimes spurred on by events and perceptions surrounding the shooting of Trayvon Martin, and the case hasn’t even made it to trial. The same malevolent media, race hustlers, and political opportunists that have sowed discord now face a cultural disaster of their own making. If they cannot find a way to rein in the violence they’ve instigated, the integrated, color-blind society that so many of us had hoped was just on the horizon may be set back decades once again. _PJM

Trayvon's tragic life trajectory was already propelling him toward the dark gangsta side of black community dysfunction. In death, Trayvon is performing that function for legions of other young black men, in a positive feedback cycle that has no clear end.

The black US underclass has been simmering on hate for a number of decades, and scores of years of affirmative action and generous government benefits appear to have only made things worse.

American readers: be very careful where you step, particularly after dark. Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.

"Do It For Trayvon!" Another Black on White Beating

A Virginia newspaper waited two weeks before reporting a brutal beating suffered by two of their own employees, at the hands of a crowd of black youth out for a lark on a Saturday night. Why the delay in reporting on a violent assault that victimises two of your own people? Why indeed.

Two weeks have passed since reporters Dave Forster and Marjon Rostami - friends to me and many others at the newspaper - were attacked on a Saturday night as they drove home from a show at the Attucks Theatre. They had stopped at a red light, in a crowd of at least 100 young people walking on the sidewalk. Rostami locked her car door. Someone threw a rock at her window. Forster got out to confront the rock-thrower, and that's when the beating began.

...Forster and Rostami's story has not, until today, appeared in this paper. The responding officer coded the incident as a simple assault, despite their assertions that at least 30 people had participated in the attack. A reporter making routine checks of police reports would see "simple assault" and, if the names were unfamiliar, would be unlikely to write about it. In this case, editors hesitated to assign a story about their own employees. Would it seem like the paper treated its employees differently from other crime victims?

...The next day, Forster searched Twitter for mention of the attack. One [tweet] chilled him.

"I feel for the white man who got beat up at the light," wrote one person.

"I don't," wrote another, indicating laughter. "(do it for trayvon martin)"

...Forster and Rostami, both white, suffered a beating at the hands of a crowd of black teenagers.... Were Forster and Rostami beaten in some kind of warped, vigilante retribution for a killing 750 miles away, a person none of them knew? Was it just bombast? Is a beating funny, ever? _HamptonRoads.com

If this attack had involved a crowd of white youth attacking a middle-class black couple stopped at a red light on the way home, it would have become a headline in papers from coast to coast, and a leading story on broadcast media for weeks -- if not months (think of the Trayvon story).

Black on white violence has become so common -- and so embarrassing to leftist-oriented publishers and broadcast executives -- that it is almost universally ignored, despite its much greater prevalence.

And it seems that the publisher of the Virginia newspaper in question is very tight with the Obama administration -- another reason to try to keep the story quiet.

Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.