Chinese goods are not cheap

The real cost of Chinese goods becomes more apparent by the day.

Clyde Prestowitz, The globalization god has feet of clay

According to a popular mantra of the time, globalization would make all nations rich, being rich they would all become democratic, and being democratic they would all become peaceful because democracies don't go to war against each other, or, at least, that was the belief. In effect, globalization was widely viewed among the American policy elite as a kind of Americanization. The whole world would become like the United States and then America would have no enemies and peace would reign.

This thinking was a powerful force behind the drive to bring China into the World Trade Organization. It was widely believed that countries whose industries participated in the same global supply chains would not go to war with each other. This view was reflected in the widely articulated notion of making China "a responsible stakeholder" in the global economy.

To be sure, World War III has not yet begun and hopefully never will. But what we are seeing in Asia looks a lot like what we saw in Europe in the early 20th century. Globalization has not led, at least not yet, to full democratization. The creation of wealth has not only lifted living standards. It has also increased the ability of nations to pursue ambitions and old rivalries despite being in the same supply chains and despite being interdependent.

Far from leading to peace, the god of globalization is revealing feet of clay as the possibility of war becomes more apparent.

Report links years of cyber attacks to Chinese military

The American cyber security firm Mandiant, which worked with the New York Times to expose and counter a China-based hacking campaign, has released an extensive report that it says ties years of cyber attacks on U.S. corporations back to the Chinese military.

Mandiant says it can even narrow down the hackers to a specific military unit in the Chinese army, Unit 61398, and a specific location in Shanghai.

... APT1 is their name for the Chinese hackers.

Shanghai unit that hacked 115 U.S. targets wasn't even China's 'A-Team'

In just the last week, the abbreviation APT1 has come to represent the bogeyman of digital espionage nightmares. On Monday, security response firm Mandiant released a report profiling a hacker group of that name–referring to it as Advanced Persistent Threat One–and providing detailed evidence that it represented the most active hacking unit within China’s People’s Liberation Army, one that’s compromised more than 141 private sector and government targets in seven years, 115 of which were American.

But if APT1 is the most prolific team of hackers in the Chinese military, it’s not necessarily the best. In fact, when I spoke with Richard Bejtlich, chief security officer at Mandiant and a well-known author and blogger on network security, he argued that APT1 is actually a relatively sloppy group of hackers, and that its mistakes were what part of what allowed Mandiant to profile the unit in such detail. More than a dozen more elite groups of hackers likely operate within China’s military, says Bejtlich, groups that are both harder to track and harder to defend against ...

NY Times says Chinese hacked its computers over story on top Communist leader's wealth

Chinese hackers repeatedly penetrated The New York Times' computer systems over the past four months, stealing reporters' passwords and hunting for files on an investigation into the wealth amassed by the family of a top Chinese leader, the newspaper reported Thursday.

Security experts hired to investigate and plug the breach found that the attacks used tactics similar to ones used in previous hacking incidents traced to China, the report said. It said the hackers routed the attacks through computers at U.S. universities, installed a strain of malicious software, or malware, associated with Chinese hackers and initiated the attacks from Chinese university computers previously used by the Chinese military to attack U.S. military contractors.

The attacks, which began in mid-September, coincided with a Times investigation into how the relatives and family of Premier Wen Jiabao built a fortune worth over $2 billion. The report, which was posted online Oct. 25, embarrassed the Communist Party leadership, coming ahead of a fraught transition to new leaders and exposing deep-seated favoritism at a time when many Chinese are upset about a wealth gap.

A spy at NASA? FBI investigating Chinese man arrested fleeing country

The FBI said Tuesday it is actively investigating a Chinese man arrested Saturday with a one-way ticket out of U.S. -- a scientist potentially carrying highly confidential military secrets and rocket technology from NASA labs.

Bo Jiang, a contractor at the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) who had been working at NASA-Langley, was arrested at Dulles International Airport on Saturday by FBI and DHS agents as he was trying to leave the country, Fox News has confirmed.

... Jiang was arrested carrying several data storage devices, including hard drives, flash drives and computers that likely contained sensitive information.

“What they did here potentially could be a direct threat to our country,” Wolf told Discovery News. “The Chinese have the most comprehensive spying program in Washington that has ever been. They make the KGB look like they were the junior varsity or freshman team.”

Meanwhile, here in Australia ...

Hackers targeting Australia's electronic secrets

Australian intelligence authorities are reporting a major increase in cyber-espionage attacks from abroad and fear the consequences could be devastating.

Hacking attempts are now so frequent that entire teams work around the clock to repel attacks on sensitive Government departments.

Professor Alan Dupont, a defence and security expert at the University of New South Wales, says the bottom line is that spies are trying to get Australia's electronic secrets.

"The incidence of penetration of our cyber-walls here in Australia have gone up astronomically over the last five years," he said.

"You're probably seeing maybe 400 to 600 per month, at least, trying to penetrate the firewalls of the Department of Defence and other national security agencies."

One former Defence staffer hired to repel cyber attacks says genuine hacking attempts are made on the Defence network at least 20 times every day.

But the risk to big business is of equal concern, as hackers and even foreign governments try to steal Australia's valuable commercial secrets ...

Former intelligence analyst Paul Monk dismisses Chinese denials on the issue.

"We see this massive, very intrusive, very sophisticated cyber-espionage taking place, more or less certainly based in China," he said.

It’s global cyber war out there

Sitting in an office in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s Soviet-style building, which mirrors the Orwellian bunker one might imagine, Australia’s most experienced spy master, David Irvine, has a lot on his mind as he gazes over Lake Burley Griffin.

Irvine, the director-general of ASIO, knows Australian business and the government are engaged in a new, and irreversible, “cold cyberwar”, which the Americans have designated as the fifth and most uncertain defence domain.

And he believes the “target environment” is becoming richer by the day as our electricity, power, transport, and communications infrastructures are inexorably integrated into the internet.

... with the privatisation of so many utilities over the past three decades, government has unwittingly delegated national security to business ...

“The more rocks we turn over in cyberspace, the more we find ... the internet and increased connectivity has expanded infinitely the opportunities for [these threats]”, Irvine says...

Since 2003 the Chinese have executed advanced cyber-espionage operations against the West, including Australia, stealing hundreds of billions worth of business and military secrets in what United States officials say is “the greatest transfer of wealth in history”.

The Chinese were fingered in the hacking of Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s computers in the 2008 US presidential election campaign. In 2011 they allegedly penetrated the parliamentary email systems of 10 Australian federal ministers, including Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and compromised emails belonging to the European Union President and his advisers...

ENORMOUS COSTS

In July 2012 General Keith Alexander, head of the US National Security Agency and the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, declared cyber-theft constituted the “the greatest transfer of wealth in history”.

“The cost of IP theft to the US companies [is] $US250 billion a year” with an additional $US1 trillion spent globally on remediation.

“That’s our future disappearing in front of us”, Alexander said.

Shun US 'tiger' and Japanese 'wolf', Chinese colonel warns

Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu, of the National Defence University, blamed America’s "orchestration" and Japan’s "militarism" for rising tensions over disputed islands known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.

"America is the global tiger and Japan is Asia's wolf and both are now madly biting China," Colonel Liu said. "Of all the animals, Chinese people hate the wolf the most."

China was a peaceful nation but it would fight to the death if seriously attacked, he said ...

Colonel Liu directly warned Australia not to follow the US or Japan into any military conflict with China. He said Australia should play the role of a "kind-hearted lamb" and China would discourage it from being led astray.

"Australia should never play the jackal for the tiger or dance with the wolf," he said...

"American hegemony is not at its dawn and not at its zenith," Colonel Liu said. "It is at its sunset and night is coming." ...

Great, world peace is now in the hands of colonels with animal metaphors.

So if this is the cost of making China rich with our trade, why are we still buying their goods?

Maybe that's why Obama wants a trade deal with Europe. If so, that's a step in the right direction. Trade with our allies, and returning manufacturing to the West, is the path to peace and growth.

China is pricing itself out of the market.

File under: economics is a matter of national security.

Melanie Phillips lets rip into David Cameron

Following the recent rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), "conservative" leader David Cameron ridiculed UKIP as a bunch of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists". Here, Melanie Phillips rips into Cameron for dismissing the "perfectly reasonable" concerns of such voters regarding mass immigration, and ceding power to the EU, etc.


Transcript:

UKIP are a danger to the Tories because of the danger that they will split the Tory vote. But Mr Cameron has made a tremendous rod for his own back, because he scorned UKIP as a party of "closet racists, loonies and fruitcakes" - rather like we've been hearing from members of the audience this evening. And the problem is that since very, very large numbers of people who always used to vote conservative have the same kind of views about immigration, about the EU, about human rights, about traditional values of one kind or another - Mr Cameron basically insulted his own core vote. He insulted the vast majority of conservatives.

And as a result, conservatives have felt for years, true conservatives, first of all, totally disenfranchised because their so-called conservative party had actually decided it had to become left-wing in order to gain power. And not only did they become disenfranchised but they became subjected to the kind of insults that we've heard from members of the audience, in which people who have a perfectly reasonable point of view, that while immigrants are going to add greatly to the value of the nation, there has got to be a limit, you cannot have everyone coming in. That there are genuinely profound reasons why British people might want to retain democratic control over their government rather than cede it to the EU.

These are legitimate points of view. You may disagree. You are welcome to disagree. But to call people: "scaremongering, racists, disgusting". This is why... It is this vilification of the point of view of ordinary decent people in their millions which is what Mr Cameron has managed to achieve. He's managed to tell his core constituency: "I don't want you on board, because I think you are disgusting! You backwards men. You conservatives. I'm going to turn this into Not The Conservative Party." And look where it's got him. And it serves him right.

File under: a perfectly reasonable point of view.

(Via GatesOfVienna)

Paul Weston launches Liberty GB party

By London's Tower Bridge, Paul Weston launches Liberty GB and explains why this new political party is needed to halt Britain's catastrophic decline.


Transcript

Hello, my name is Paul Weston and this is just a brief introductory video for the launch of a new party, which we’re going to call Liberty GB. Now I know there’s been a lot of discussion about British Freedom recently and why I left.

The main reason I left, there were two schools of thought at the top of British Freedom: one was people who didn’t mind the fact that we were only seen as the political wing of the EDL; and my school of thought was that if we want to reach out to Middle Britain this was going to [be …] a problem. And a lot of people talked to me and said, look I’d like to join, but I do have some issues with the EDL side of it.

Now I support in principle everything the EDL do, but I am aware of the fact that this does put some people off, which is why there was a spilt in British Freedom; and that is exactly why we are now starting a new party. We need to have a new party that appeals to Middle Britain because at the moment nobody will talk about these issues, or if they do talk about them they’re sidelined politically by the mainstream media who on the whole are extremely left wing. So we need to have a new party. And when I look at the people out there at the moment in the mainstream ... David Cameron’s Conservatives will not talk about the major issues, which to me are mass immigration – which now has got to such a point that it equates to population replacement – and they won’t talk about Islam. And of course Labour won’t, and of course the Lib Dems won’t.

The only party that will talk about it is the British National Party, but I don’t think they are going anywhere politically. They may very well be the biggest national[ist] party in the country, and there’s an awful lot, tens of thousands of people, who support the BNP but do not support a leader who is a holocaust denier and has the background that he has. So I can discount the BNP in terms of really gaining electoral success in the future, and the mainstream parties as I just said are absolutely useless when it comes to it.

So this is why we are starting this party, and we will talk about Islam, we will talk about population replacement, which as I said is literally genocidal. We’ve seen what’s happened to some of our big cities over the last few years, and the 2011 Census made it very clear that we are not just having some sort of multicultural, wonderful immigration policy, we are being cleaned out of our towns and out of our cities. This is incredibly serious and it’s now reached the point – the tipping point, if you will – where in twenty years’ time all of our cities will be minority white. And then the towns will follow and in twenty years, thirty years, certainly by 2030, 2040, we are going to be in the position where we are the ethnic minority in this country. And when you look at other countries – particularly the countries where the people who are replacing us, where they come from – all you see is violence, murder, rape and corruption, and I don’t want that to happen to this country.

So this is why we exist. I want everybody to understand that the whole premise of British Freedom I thought was right but there were just problems, politically speaking, how we went about it.

So, as I say, this is just a very brief introductory video. We will be putting more videos out in the future examining the problems I’m talking about. But for now, remember the name Liberty GB. It should be up on the web with this video, and I hope that you will join.

Thank you very much – my name is Paul Weston.

And here is an earlier video of Paul Weston suggesting that Britain is headed for civil war if nothing is done to halt Islamisation and Third World immigration.


File under: catastrophic decline.

Lars Hedegaard & the Assassin at the Door

Lars Hedegaard, a Danish journalist and historian, is the founder of the International Free Press Society and editor of Dispatch International.

Lars Hedegaard, The Assassin at the Door.
The day a gunman disguised as a postal worker tried to kill him.

I opened a window in my apartment to see who was down below at the front door. A man dressed in a red jacket with the logo of the Danish postal service was waiting at the door. He said he had a package for me ...

I went down and opened the front door ... As I held the package ... he immediately pulled out a gun and fired at my head ...

The distance between us must have been less than a yard. Nevertheless, he missed ...

Regrettably, he managed to run off with the gun. The police found a bullet hole in the wall and a cartridge.

I judged my attacker to be around 25 years old and either an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants—most probably from an Arab country or possibly Pakistan. He spoke Danish with no accent ...

I have been an outspoken critic of Islamic supremacism and of attempts to impose Islamic Shariah law in Denmark and the West ...

Dispatch International is critical of mass immigration to Sweden and Denmark from third-world countries and takes a dim view of Islam ...

Lars Hedegaard Speaks to the Danish Free Press Society

... I would like to point out that if you have read what I‘ve written — I have written several books and many articles — then you will see that I have never expressed hatred towards any specific ethnic groups.

I do not hate Muslims, I differentiate between Muslims and the ideology of Islam ...

In this country one is able to without the slightest risk stand up and pronounce that of course Sharia will be introduced with everything that it implies in terms of barbaric punishment and repression. One can also, without anyone touching a single hair on one’s head, state that immoral women must have stones thrown at their heads until they die, and that Muslims who turn their back on Islam of course must be killed. But if you say or write that this is what Islam is all about then you are guaranteed to be accused of racism, risk criminal prosecution, and — as we have just witnessed — attempted murder...

That’s why I’m saying: is it not better to start listening to what people are actually trying to say, rather than stigmatizing them as outlaws who can be treated accordingly? Could it not be the case that those who in recent years have warned against the mass immigration of people who cannot and will not integrate into our society actually are deeply concerned about what is going to happen to Denmark and to our children? Could it not be the case that those who warn against the threat of Islamization are actually afraid of Islamization because they have seen what has happened in places wherever Islam has become prominent? That they are afraid of losing our most precious freedom, namely the freedom of expression? If it is lost, it will probably never be regained.

So therefore I ask questions, and I will continue to ask questions. And so therefore I speak, and I will continue to speak.

Diana West, Old Vikings of the Counterjihad

So why the attempt to kill him now? The feeling at both Dispatch International and the Danish Free Press Society is that the trigger was the advent of the new newspaper, which last month began regular publication and, in its Swedish edition, delivery. (It is available online in Danish and Swedish, and in English here: www.d-intl.com/?lang=en.) Covering all manner of issues mainstream media ignore – much of it (not all) regarding the effects of Islamic law and immigration on indigenous European peoples – the newspaper clearly hit multiple nerves, even coming under a sustained cyberattack in December, which police are still investigating.

File under: killing to protect a "peaceful" religion?

(Via Andrew Bostom)

Chinese buying up Sydney prestige properties

Watch as a journalist, and real-estate agent, with no sense of identity, have nothing but praise for the "astonishing" level of Chinese interest in the Sydney property market.


Chinese get a taste for Sydney (02:59)
A new visa is working wonders for Sydney's prestige market.
Property editor Stephen Nicholls reports.

STEPHEN NICHOLLS: The level of Chinese interest in Sydney's real-estate at the moment is astonishing. This enthusiasm was celebrated at the recent launch of the Domain Chinese magazine at the Opera House ... [that] targets the 380,000 Chinese Australians that call NSW 'home'. And a new Domain Chinese website will showcase Sydney to a potential audience of 1.3 billion. The Chinese just love the look of our property ...

Property agents say a new visa, called the Significant Investor Visa, is already having an impact on Chinese property hunters. This visa fast-tracks and simplifies the complicated process that foreigners face when trying to move here. By putting $5 million into approved investments they can fast-track entry into Australia.

MICHAEL PALLIER (Sotheby's): Four weeks ago, Sotherby's in Hong Kong organised a roadshow with one the the major Australian banks for their private clients in Shanghai, so we had sixty people who had put down the $5 million for their visa, met at a hotel in Shanghai one evening and they had a dinner, and we were able to showcase nine of our best properties to those people. So we actually got to the people before they got to Australia ...

STEPHEN NICHOLLS: Agents say, that with a million millionaires ... so in love with Sydney property, it's time to get your house in order.

MICHAEL PALLIER: If I was a vendor of a prestige property I would be making sure that it appeals to the Asian market as much as I could, and I'd be absolutely pitching it to the Chinese market because that will be the future, more and more and more. And I think that if we want to get with it we have to understand that the Asian people, their wealth's increasing, and they'll want to buy more and more of these properties. So this will just continue, ... it's like a big wheel that's starting to roll, and it's just going to roll faster and faster and faster. So you've got to get on board if you want to get a good price for your house.

And Sydney is also on track to soon be dominated by an Asian population. So while Geert Wilders recently labelled Sydney as "the Australian city where Islamisation has progressed the furthest" (which is true), nonetheless Sydney is on track to be Asianised, not Islamised. Everyone else will be priced out of the market, or leave because they feel alienated.

So long as we continue to be led by reckless and dangerous men without identity, our future as displaced strangers in our own land is assured.

File under: country for sale.