Then we have the situation in the United States. The first thing we'd say is that if you don't have Fox News on your cable TV, you should at least read some articles on the internet -
among others. We won't say too much because most has been said before. In addition we can recommend Sky News Australia on Youtube for information on Australia's stand against Chinese commercial and political aggression in the SW Pacific, the South China Sea and in Australia and to a lesser extent in NZ - so far. Other Youtube videos we read are Newsmax TV, The Epoch Times, LBC (from the UK), US Dept. of State, and NTD News. It is notable that NZ is almost never mentioned as an ally of Australia and the US, probably because it is seen as a nonentity cowering under the fictional protection of its FTA with the Chinese Communist Party. NZ has so far been warned twice very publicly by the Chinese Ambassador to "stay out of China's internal affairs", otherwise there will be consequences - no doubt relating to aspects of the aforesaid FTA.
The following is an article lifted directly from Fox News on the 16th. July. You will never see this truth reporting in Granny Herald in Godszone!!! And certainly not on that lying fakenews channel - CNN.
1) Bill Barr, the United States Attorney-General in an address at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, warns of Chinese efforts to dominate industries, calls out Hollywood, and tech. giants for caving to Chinese pressure. The United States Attorney-General delivered a dire warning to the US and the world on Thursday the 16th. July regarding what he said could be "the most important issue for our nation and the world in the 21st. century", which he referred to as "the Chinese Communist Party's global ambitions".
Discussing sectors, including the technology, pharmaceutical, and entertainment industries, Barr described how the Chinese Government is "engaged in an economic blitzkrieg" aimed at dominating the global economy and replacing the US as the world's top superpower.
"The CCP has launched an orchestrated campaign, across all of its many tentacles in Chinese Government and society, to exploit the openness of our institutions in order to destroy them," Barr said during an address at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum.
To achieve their goals, Barr said, the People's Republic of China (PRC) is utilising "a wide array of predatory and often unlawful tactics" that include currency manipulation, theft of intellectual property, cyberattacks and espionage.
Barr said that the Chinese Communist Party's "Made in China 2025" initiative "poses a real threat to US technological leadership", as China seeks to dominate a number of high-tech industries.
The Attorney-General further warned that the US is already "dangerously dependent" in certain areas, such as rare earth materials used in a wide variety of technological devices and active pharmaceutical ingredients (API's).
"As one Defense Health Agency official noted, should China decide to limit or restrict the delivery of API's to the United States, it could result in severe shortages of pharmaceuticals for both domestic and military uses", Barr said.
At the same time, Barr said, China "has systematically preyed on American companies" by placing obstacles in the health market ranging from price limitations to counterfeiting. He mentioned that Chinese nationals working at US pharmaceutical companies have been caught stealing secrets in both the US and in China.
"The ultimate ambition of China's rulers isn't to trade with the United States," Barr said. "It is to raid the United States".
Barr lamented that far too many American companies have complied with Chinese demands in order to seek short-term profits.
"Sadly, examples of American business bowing to Beijing are legion," Barr said, pointing to how Hollywood "regularly censors its own movies to appease the Chinese Communist Party." Giving examples, including the films "World War Z" and "Doctor Strange", Barr noted how studios have altered key components of films so as not to offend the Chinese Government, which would risk having the movies closed off to more than a billion people who make up the Chinese market.
"Chinese Government censors don't need to say a word, because Hollywood is doing their work for them", Barr said. "This is a massive propaganda coup for the Chinese Communist party".
Barr also called out tech. giants such as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo for being "all too willing to collaborate with the CCP", pointing to how Apple removed the news app, Quartz, from their on-line store because China opposed their coverage of protests in Hong Kong.
Barr issued a grave warning to firms that may believe it is in their best interests to work with China. "If you are an American business leader, appeasing the PRC may bring short term rewards. But in the end, the PRC's goal is to replace you".
Now we see the forced closure of the PRC Consulate in Houston,Texas. The Consulate serves as the lynchpin of all of the PRC's espionage and intellectual property theft in the US. China has retaliated with ordering the closure of a US Consulate in China. This situation will only escalate.
China is by far the greatest challenge facing the US (and the world), even surpassing the effects of the Chinese Virus - which China unleashed on the world in any case. So, it all comes back to China. The US and its allies (Australia, the UK, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam and Indonesia) are conducting constant and on-going exercises in the South China Sea where China has stolen small islands and reefs which are and have been for many years the legal property of various of the nations mentioned just above. These exercises involve beach landings of troops and naval manoeuvers centred around at least 2 of the US Navy's aircraft carriers and their support ships. In addition we have the situation surrounding Taiwan and China's unyielding determination to invade and conquer the island to incorporate it into the People's Republic of China. This would bring undoubted US retaliation and defence of Taiwan.
China has of course been building substantial military bases for approximately the past 5 yearsat least on all of the aforementioned islands.
At this point we should state 2 possible scenarios resulting from the upcoming US elections on November 3rd. These scenarios will seriously affect Australia and NZ.
1) Trump is defeated - Biden, who is fatally compromised by past bribery by the CCP of the Office of the Vice President of the United States while he was in office, would immediately cave to the CCP. This would embolden the CCP and they would consolidate their influence in the Western Pacific by invading Taiwan and making their military installations in the South China Sea virtually impregnable. China's economy would continue to expand and that of the US would resume the decline which Trump stopped. China would then demand that Australia and NZ sign their Belt and Road Initiative - probably on far less favourable terms than might have been the case before. Fancy a Chinese Naval Base at Marsden Point? Air Force base at Whenuapai? This type of thing has already happened in other parts of the world.
Apparently the establishment of the Belt and Road Initiative in NZ in particular is seen as a stepping stone to South America - look out Colombia!! Ambitions for a global empire to be sure.
2) Trump wins - he would of necessity over the next 4 years hammer China economically in order to drag the US at least partially out of their horrific debt situation; created by previous administrations (particularly by Obama when US debt DOUBLED with nothing to show for it) and now made far worse with the C Virus. The US would also maintain the pressure on China in the W Pacific which would also be in Australia's and NZ's direct best interests. This would cause the Chinese economy to tank and Australia's and NZ's along with it. However, while this would cause a period of economic difficulty - to say the least - there are other markets which must and could be developed. India has a comparable population with China and could replace China as a major trading partner. India hates the Chinese and, although they currently have a protectionist economy, it is likely that they would be open to trade with NZ and Australia in order to assist in containing China. Then there is the rest of SE Asia - Vietnam, etc. And of course after the end of this year, the UK will be keen to establish a FTA and even maybe the EU, which depending on your opinion, may not have much future, unless they can revert to being just a trading bloc as they were in the early 1970's.
President Donald Trump is the only person in the world right now capable of gradually forcing the PRC back in their hegemonic claims in these areas. For these reasons he MUST win in November.
There are massive efforts to prevent his re-election and even the Chinese Virus has been politicised in the US against him. But if Trump had not closed the US border to China towards the end of January, the US death count would in all likelihood have been tens of thousands higher. Every country has made mistakes re the C Virus simply because there has never been anything even similar to rely on as a precedent before. Even now there are patterns developing which are concerning, but the Trump Administration is doing its utmost to eventually destroy it. There are even two promising developments as regards a vaccine in the pipeline. The other day Joe Biden ludicrously said that if elected, he "woulda done this and woulda done that". In fact in all the examples he gave, the Trump Administration has already done them - sometime ago. Biden continually presents as a mentally deficient and incompetent presidential candidate. He would be controlled by the far left extremists of the Democrat Party and It would be a disaster if he were to be elected. But in spite of the polls, there does appear - just as in 2016 - to be an extensive undercurrent of support for Trump from people who never divulge their political intentions, and who are in many cases not prepared to take the risk of stating their intentions, because they are worried about possible reprisals. This effective denial of free speech means that the 1st. Amendment to the Constitution is being sabotaged by people whose aim is to destroy the United States by whatever means possible. And this in the first instance means they need to prevent Trump's re-election because he represents the only opposition to their gaining real socialist power through subversion of the Democrat Party which has lurched far to the left.
Racism is a term much bandied about lately, but it should not be forgotten that the Democrats have been the party of racism for a long time. They were the party of the Confederacy which started the Civil War in 1861, they supported slavery, they were the gestation of the Ku Klux Klan. Joe Biden supported racial segregation in the South in the 1960's and opposed the mixed race "bussing" of white and black children to schools. He even feted a segregationist Democrat Senator, Strom Thurmond, who was in office between 1956 and 2003.
And it should also not be forgotten that it was a Democrat President, Andrew Jackson, who in 1830 pushed through the Indian Removal Act which allowed the forced removal and extinguishment of land titles of mainly Cherokee Indians from lands in the South East 1,000 miles to lands west of the Mississippi River in what since became Oklahoma. Other minor tribes were involved and slaves as well. By 1837 some 46,000 Indians plus 4,000 slaves had been forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands. This movement of native people became known as "The Trail of Tears" and it is estimated that a total of 8,000 perished along the way - mostly dying of exposure and starvation.
Those were Democrats for you.
Another article - this time about Colombia from Colombiareports - August 2016.
"A 200 year history lesson to understand the FARC's conflict with Colombia's state".
"The conflict between the FARC and the Colombian government began in 1964, but political violence closely related to the current conflict began decades earlier.
Colombia has never had much of a stable democracy. In its more than 200 years of existence, the former Spanish colony has had more than a dozen constitutions.
These radical constitutional changes were partly due to a partisan division between Conservatives and Liberals, an ideological rift introduced by Liberator, Simon Bolivar and his second in command, General Francisco de Paula Santander.
Followers of the relatively conservative Bolivar with the support of the Catholic Church founded the Conservative Party in 1848 in response to the foundation of the secular Liberal Party, which was based on the British Enlightenment principles favoured by Santander.
At the time the current Republic of Colombia had not yet been founded.
The two parties were not just ideologically opposed, but were supported by and sometimes catered to distinct economically and politically powerful families.
The current President (in 2016), Juan Manuel Santos, for example, is a descendant of independence fighter Antonia Santos and a grand-nephew of President Eduardo Santos.
Attempts to consolidate political and economic power by these two powerhouses led to several violent confrontations, wars, and periods of political exclusion between the late 19th. century and the 1940's.
The violence with more radically leftist forces did not take place until after World War II, when a populist liberal politician, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, opposed the Conservative Government and really began moving the masses, threatening the status quo the Liberal Party and Conservative Party had long benefited from.
Gaitan's murder in 1948 sparked a period called "La Violencia", a decade-long brutality in which more than 200,000 Colombians were killed.
The partisan violence ended in 1958 when the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party agreed to divide power, taking turns holding public office and controlling the economy every 4 years. This agreement was called the "National Front".
The less pragmatic, more ideological left wing of the Liberal Party, joined by Communists and influenced by a wave of socialist revolts across the continent, did not accept this National Front.
In the countryside, where inequality was bordering extreme levels, farmers began revolting against the Bogota based political elite.
From this movement sprang the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who were initially nothing but a handful of peasants.
In 1964 they declared themselves independent, forming the Republic of Marquetalia in a tiny village on the foot of the Nevada de Huila mountain range.
The guerrilla's first attack took place in 1966.
For decades, the FARC remained active in the countryside and was of relatively little nuisance in the cities as the group lacked financing.
The conflict escalated in the 1980's when several leftist rebel groups became active, drug trafficking revenue was financing weapons across the country, and right-wing self-defence forces began forming to protect private interests from the increasingly powerful and wealthy guerillas.
In hand with the Colombian Communist Party, the strengthened FARC began to have political ambitions at a national level, posing a serious challenge to the political status quo.
In 1985, the Colombian government began peace talks with the different rebel groups and the FARC joined more moderate leftist thought leaders to form a political party, the Patriotic Union.
Rebel groups, M-19 and EPL, decided to demobilise in 1991 after the government agreed to a new constitution.
However, groups like the FARC and ELN did not demobilise and did not agree with the new constitution.
The Patriotic Union - the rebels' attempt to actively participate in politics - faced an extermination campaign by right-wing paramilitary groups and extreme elements within the state, particularly the military.
Additionally the government created bad blood by attacking a FARC compound in the middle of the talks.
In turn, the FARC removed itself from politics and began an impressive territorial expansion, increasingly using the revenue from drug trafficking to fund their military campaign.
The group had also discovered a new form of making money that also served as political intimidation, kidnapping.
However, as the FARC in the mid 90's were approaching the gates of the capital, Bogota from the south, state-aligned paramilitary groups from the northwest and east of Colombia united and formed the AUC and one of the bloodiest decades of the conflict began.
The state forces fighting the guerrillas were now supported by brutal paramilitary forces that began pushing the guerrillas back south while taking increased control of the drug trafficking trade.
However, in spite of paramilitary pressure in the north, the FARC was able to make major territorial gains in the south of the country and, financed by drug trafficking and "economic retentions", or kidnappings for extortion purposes, the FARC was able to grow stronger, increasing their territorial pressure to the point they were putting up roadblocks outside major cities.
Faced by the increasingly strong guerrilla group and an increasingly weak state, President Andres Pastrana (1998-2002) agreed to peace talks with the guerrlllas in 1999 while obtaining US support for the military defeat of the FARC.
Meanwhile, paramilitary violence surged and groups united in the AUC in 1997 carried out a brutal offensive, breaking victimisation records while the Pastrana Administration was negotiating with the FARC.
The talks failed in 2002, and the military offensive supported by the 1999 Plan Colombia deal came into action.
Following the talks, the Colombian people elected Alvaro Uribe, a hard-liner and Plan Colombia really came to full force.
The Colombian military gained access to arms and intelligence and was also increasingly able to push the FARC deeper into the jungle.
The paramilitary forces demobilised between 2003 and 2006 and the military, now just with US support, since then fought the guerrillas on its own. By 2008, the FARC was at its weakest point and lost its founder, Manuel Marulanda, a.k.a. "Sure Shot".
However, the military successes claimed by the Colombian government of Alvaro Uribe and the US government of George W. Bush came with a major human cost; millions of Colombians were displaced. tens of thousands of civilians were killed or otherwise victimised.
The US began pulling funds following a series of scandals and tens of thousands of human rights abuses and the Colombian Military was left on its own.
Additionally, the weakened FARC switched from the toxic territorial warfare with large armies to traditional guerrilla warfare using tiny units undetectable from the sky and easily hidden among the civilian population.
The conflict appeared to have reached a stalemate as the military's effectiveness dropped, while that of the guerrillas went up.
However, the Colombian government, under the leadership of former President Alvaro Uribe, began approaching the FARC after the demobilisation of the AUC.
These initiatives did not result in either informal or formal talks until current (2016) President Juan Manuel Santos took office in 2010 and, while still at war, began secret peace talks with the FARC in 2011 that resulted in the formal peace talks announced in 2012.
In the second half of 2016 these talks have culminated in a peace deal that will have to be ratified by Colombians, many of whom have not had the fortune to enjoy one day of peace."
Following from this history of violence and conflict over the last 200 years in Colombia, there is a very disturbing article in Colombia Reports dated 19/07/20 - "9,031,048 conflict victims is enough". "Colombia exceeds 9 million victims as country sinks deeper into armed conflict".
9 million represents approximately 18% of Colombia's total present population. This has occurred over a period of some years.
"The ongoing killing of demobilised members of the FARC and the AUC, the systematic assassination of Colombia's social leaders and a thriving drug trade are sinking the country back into war.
Only a few FARC guerrillas have forgotten how their 1985 attempt to join politics and the demobilisation of the AUC ended up in mass exterminations and a resurgence of armed conflict.
The ELN has shown no restraint in trying to capitalise on the killing of community leaders and political activists to recruit new members, arguing a peaceful solution to the country's social conflicts are naive.
The numbers don't lie. Since 2016, the year that the FARC signed the peace accord, almost 1,000 social workers have been murdered in cold blood, according to conflict monitor, Indepaz. The FARC's political party recently announced the 219th. assassination of one of their members.
Ethnic minority groups, who have seen so many of their people get killed, claim to be the victims of an extermination campaign.
President Ivan Duque and his far-right political party may be losing electoral force, but the Democratic Centre Party and its leader, former President Alvaro Uribe, are inciting violence more than ever and for good reason.
The demobilisation of the AUC threw many dozens of Uribe's allies in prison. The peace process with the FARC and ongoing criminal investigations into the former president's drug ties and alleged war crimes leave the impression it is going to be their turn to go to jail next.
At the same time, record Cocaine production is providing more revenue than ever to arm illegal armed groups and submit Colombia to the same terror the country suffered in the worst years of the armed conflict.
To make things worse, the COVID-19 pandemic is causing an economic crisis worse than the one in the late 1990's that almost turned the country into a failed state.
Colombia's peace movement which hasn't been able to resume last year's massive anti-government protests because of the pandemic, said last week that "silence is no option anymore" while announcing new forms of protests".
These articles about recent history in Colombia justify the promise that many Colombians and ourselves felt about the future of this wonderful country, with the promise of the end of violent conflict in 2016, together with a resurgent economy. However, with the C Virus exacerbating the results of constant corruption over a long period of time, and the resumption of activities of armed paramilitary units, we are feeling far less optimistic about the future here. We hope that coming months give us reason to feel differently - we will see. Corruption and increasing narcotics based armed conflict are ruining this otherwise great country. There are so many opportunities, one of which would be for Colombia to at least partially take over the manufacturing activity which will be, and is being right now, taken from China and to supply those goods to North America and all of Latin America, all of which is right on Colombia's doorstep.
It engenders a great feeling of disappointment that our decision back in 2016 to purchase property and ultimately settle in Colombia may have been somewhat over optimistic. We hope that this feeling is well and truly proved wrong and that we can all continue in the future to enjoy the many attributes of living in Colombia.
The people, the climate, the gardens, the cleanliness of everything, and the cost of living plus enjoying the dynamism of Medellin, are just some of the benefits of life in Colombia, and in Medellin (City of Eternal Spring) in particular.
Before we go we would just like to highlight a conundrum that we are facing re voting in NZ's upcoming parliamentary election in September. In recent times we have voted NZ First because Winston does seem to keep the main parties honest - at least as far as that's possible!! However, we have become aware that National initiated contact with the CCP to explore signing their Belt and Road Initiative back in 2017 when they were still in power. Now, Labour/Greens/NZ First have been furthering negotiations in secret. Even ACT says that it would be in NZ's best interests to further contact with the CCP. Well, that was about a month ago; since then there have been many more developments and one can only hope that they are seeing the error of their ways. But we cannot be sure and, as we consider the CCP issue to be of such importance, we have reluctantly come to the necessary conclusion that we cannot vote for anyone. This will be the first time in our lives that we will have taken that stand, and, whle we don't like not voting, we feel there is no choice. The Chinese issue is just too vital.
We emailed both National and ACT to ascertain their attitudes to China. National did not even give us the courtesy of a reply and ACT appeared to tink that continued contact with the CCP was desirable. On that basis they are both off our Christmas card list!!
With that, we will end this blog and its recording of the huge problems in this dysfunctional world. Problems that will certainly result in unpredictable ending of ways of life that we have known and accepted for all of our lives.
We hope that you are all remaining well and look forward in particular to Trump's success in November and a corresponding reduction - or even extermination - of the Chinese Virus.
Con mucho amor y los mejores deseos para todos nuestros amigos y familias.
Jim and Jean
Medellin
Colombia
Medellin - 25th.July 2020.
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