Last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev dies at 91

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has died aged 91.

Mr Gorbachev, who took over in 1985, is best known for opening up the USSR and for his rapprochement with the West, but he was unable to prevent his country collapsing in 1991.

Many Russians blame him and his reformist policies for the country's demise.

The hospital where he died said he had been suffering from a long and serious illness.

Mr Gorbachev became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, and de facto leader of the country, at the age of 54.

He was at the time the youngest member of the ruling council known as the Politburo, and was seen as a breath of fresh air after several ageing leaders.

Mikhail Gorbachev tells the BBC: World in ‘colossal danger’

How You can Fight Back against the Communist Party of China

 

Moutai – China's communist spirit | DW Documentary

 

Moutai is a sharp-tasting liquor from the town of the same name in southern China. It's also the world's most valuable alcohol brand, thanks to its popularity among the Communist Party elite and its use as a lubricant for business deals and favors.

China reportedly expands Xinjiang Uighur detention camps

Researchers in Australia have identified and mapped more than 380 suspected detention facilities in Xinjiang, that northwestern part of China where the government has interned hundreds of thousands, possibly more than a million, Muslim minorities including the Uighurs.
 

Big Brother is watching: Chinese city with 2.6m cameras is world's most heavily surveilled

When George Orwell wrote his satirical take down on the dangers of authoritarian governments 1984 was meant as a warning.  By allowing dictatorial governments to come to power through indifference or fear 1984 gives you insight as to how far government will go to maintain its hold on power.  Today we use 1984 as metaphor to describe our uneasiness with just how far our right to privacy has retreated.  Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have the ability to have access to all your personal details without your consent.  Further facial recognition is now being deployed in airports around the world.  Like all advances in technology the road to abuse will be unhindered by politicians, governments and the medias use of fear and paranoia as a logical argument to allow these abuses. In cities like London and Tokyo cameras are, to say the least ubiquitous.  For the Communist party of China undermining the rights of its citizens are the means to continued power.

Qiu Rui, a policeman in Chongqing, was on duty this summer when he received an alert from a facial recognition system at a local square. There was a high probability a man caught on camera was a suspect in a 2002 murder case, the system told him.


    

The city’s surveillance system scans facial features of people on the streets from frames of video footage in real time, creating a virtual map of the face. It can then match this information against scanned faces of suspects in a police database. If there is a match that passes a preset threshold, typically 60% or higher, the system immediately notifies officers. Three days later the police captured the man, who eventually admitted that he was the suspect.

Cases such as this, where facial recognition systems are used to help local police crack crime cases, are not unusual in the south-west China city, which recently ranked first in an analysis of the world’s most surveilled cities compiled by the UK-based technology research firm Comparitech. With 2.58m cameras covering 15.35 million people – equal to one camera for every six residents – Chongqing has more surveillance cameras than any other city in the world for its population, beating even Beijing, Shanghai and tech hub Shenzhen.

    

The infamous Chalk Girl

In 2014, during the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong, a 14-year-old girl was arrested for drawing a chalk flower on a wall where thousands were displaying protest artworks and their wishes for the future. Her case was reported all around the globe and the police overreaction was relentlessly parodied by supporters and illustrators in numerous cartoons and articles. The world dubbed her Chalk Girl.

Two years since her arrest made her an accidental hero of the pro-democracy umbrella movement, Chalk Girl must decide whether to rejoin the battle alongside the “localist” youth. As elections loom, she is torn between wanting to respect her family, who are concerned about the risks of her activism, and standing up to Chinese interference. Young localists see themselves as being in a fight to save their beloved city, and in the middle of it all, Chalk Girl is just a teenager wanting to feel part of something bigger.

The infamous Chalk Girl

China Bans Videos That Are "Unofficial"

In its never ending quest to feed the Communist parties paranoia and finding new a better ways to restrict its citizens freedoms which they claim are "so important" to them.  The government in Beijing has issued a directive  banning all unauthorised video from being published online.


New regulations block public accounts from posting ‘user-generated audio or video’, often one of the few sources of information outside state media

China has banned the vast majority of internet users from sharing videos not from official sources on social media, tightening censorship in what was already one of the most oppressive internet regime’s in the world.

The new regulations barred public accounts from posting “user-generated audio or video”, often one of the few sources of information outside state media articles relaying the government’s version of events.

China has some of the most pervasive censorship in the world. Activists have been jailed for as little as a single tweet, editors at outspoken newspapers are sacked and news articles deemed inappropriate by officials are swiftly deleted.

Remember nothing says freedom like censorship

If You Ignore It Long Enough Does That Mean It Didn't Happen?

China's happy army of overworked and underpaid censors have been working at lightspeed to erase all mentions of the Panama Papers from Chinese websites now that the country's elite have been revealed as some of the bad people hiding their money in those secret bank accounts in the world's tax havens.  Yes, China has embraced capitalism as an  economic model but, is it really necessary to emulate the corrupt decadent west?  I thought they were better than that what with all their pure as the driven snow, holier than thou and supposedly incorruptible government officials and businesses.  What a joke. They're just as greedy and corruptible as everybody else.


    Websites ordered to purge all reports related to documents following publication of political elite’s offshore secrets

Documents from the leaked Mossack Fonseca database showed the relations of three of the seven members of the Communist party’s elite ruling council, the politburo standing committee, had companies that were clients of the offshore law firm. They included relatives of Chinese president Xi Jinping. 

A Communist party censorship directive instructed news organisations to purge all reports, blogs, bulletin boards and comments relating to this week’s highly sensitive revelations. 

“Please self-inspect and delete all content related to the ‘Panama Papers’ leak,” the order said according to China Digital Times, a website run by the University of California, Berkeley.

BBC and CNN broadcasts about the revelations have been blocked all week in mainland China.

China; How To Stifle Dissent In Hong Kong

When Hong Kong returned to Chinese control in 1997 it was done under an agreement which allowed the city to continue to exercise the rights granted it under the British.  Over the last five years the people of Hong Kong have felt these rights slipping away as Beijing imposed its will in the form of censorship and refusing to relinquish its right to choose the cities government.  An independent film released last year has given the people of Hong Kong a lesson in power, control, political pressure and self censorship.

Ten Years – the terrifying vision of Hong Kong that Beijing wants obscured

A dystopian independent film has played to packed houses but after Chinese criticism it has disappeared from public screens

It has been hailed as one of the best films to come out of Hong Kong in decades, playing to packed houses and picking up nominations for two major Asian awards.

But if you want to see the independent production Ten Years the only places are private showings advertised through Facebook.

As Beijing steps up its crackdown on political dissent, the film’s disappearance has left some moviegoers scratching their heads and wondering whether the long hand of the mainland authorities may be responsible.

The timing of attacks from the mainland and the content of Ten Years appears to bear this out.

The film is a dystopian narrative composed of five short stories in which Hong Kong has been totally taken over by China to the point that neither the language, Cantonese, nor local agricultural products can be freely used.

Donald Trump Offers Up His Opinion On North Korea: Yes, It's Ignorance In Prefection

Donald Trump appearing on the American network CBS morning news program offer up his opinions on North Korea and Kim-Jong un.  Needles to say it was quite insightful.  Insightful as his opinions showed ignorance, a complete  misunderstanding of the geopolitical consequences,  how nation states interact and that American foreign policy is conducted by fiat.  

On China and forcing them to be America's foreign policy proxy on North Korea

"I would get China to make that guy [Kim Jong Un] disappear in one form or another very quickly," Trump said Wednesday on "CBS This Morning," fresh off his New Hampshire primary victory.

Asked whether that meant assassinating the dictator of the reclusive regime, Trump shrugged.

"Well, you know, I've heard of worse things, frankly. I mean this guy's a bad dude -- and don't underestimate him," Trump responded. "Any young guy that can take over from his father with all those generals and everybody else that probably wants the position, this is not somebody to be underestimated."

Does Donald Trump understand what he's suggesting is not only illegal but what the consequences would be from such an outcome?  

North Korea is unpredictable at the best of times, so if its leader were assassinated wouldn't that just raise  their paranoia level to 11 followed by following by armed conflict with South Korea whom they would blame for the Kim's death with America being the puppet master behind the South's actions.

China and its control over North Korea:

"China has control, absolute control of North Korea. They don't say it, but they do, and they should make that problem disappear," Trump said. "China is sucking us dry. They're taking our money, they're taking our jobs and doing so much. We have rebuilt China with what they've taken out. We have power over China. China should do that." 

China has joined with other countries condemning North Korea over its missile and nuclear tests  and has voted for sanctions in the United Nations  Security Council along with sending top Communist party leaders to Pyongyang on diplomatic missions in, what turned out to be fruitless efforts in dissuading them from conducting these tests.  

Whether you agree with China's North Korea policy they have their reasons. 

If China were to cut off economic aid their would be several  possible outcomes all of which they abhor. 

The reunification of Korea which could lead to an American allied country with its military stationed in the country now sharing a border with China.  

Political instability in Northeast Asia which they view as favoring the Americans and their allies and as a threat to China.

Because China views any North Korean that crosses into the country as an economic refugee rather than one fleeing a repressive authoritarian government they are forcibly repatriated when caught. A collapse of the North Korean government would lead to a flood of refugees into Northeast China. Such an occurrence they believe would cause political and economic disruption an issue they seem unable to cope with.  

   

U.S. Senator and Presidential Candidate Marco Rubio Is One Transparent Fool

Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida today condemned the Chinese government over the prosecution of Pu Zhiqiang a well respected human rights lawyer in China.  Anyone with an ounce of humanity would rightly criticize the Communist Party over their treatment of those who advocate for or defend the rights of others. Except that Senator Rubio in making these statements isn't too concerned with the rights of the accused. He's trying to prove he has a firm grasp of foreign policy.

“Even by China’s standards, the spectacle both inside and outside the court surrounding the trial of Pu Zhiqiang … was a mockery of justice and rule of law,” Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio said.
    
Except that the good senator had a completely different assessment of the current Syrian refugee crisis and what should be done to help them.

“It’s not that we don’t want to,” Rubio said in an interview with ABC. “It’s that we can’t.”

“You can have a thousand people come in and 999 of them are just poor people fleeing oppression and violence,” Rubio said. “But one of them is an Isis fighter – if that’s the case, you have a problem.

“There’s no way to vet that out. There’s no background check system in the world that allows us to find that out because who do you call in Syria to background check them?”

Senator Rubio fails to mention is that it takes anywhere from 18 to 24 months before anyone is granted refugee status.  The entire process takes place outside of the U.S.

Deadline nears for charges against Chinese feminists (video)

Chinese police are broadening their investigation into five detained female activists to focus on their campaigns against domestic violence and for more public toilets for women, their lawyers have said.

The women were taken into custody just before International Women’s Day on 8 March, and later detained on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a charge that carries a prison term of up to five years, their lawyers said on Wednesday.

Supporters of the five women – Li Tingting, 25, Wei Tingting, 26, Wang Man, 32, Zheng Churan, 25, and Wu Rongrong, 30 – initially assumed they were picked up because of their plans to demonstrate against sexual harassment on buses and trains.

Even though what they were campaigning for was completely non political the Chinese Communist Party still saw these women as a threat.

China To Test Tibetan Monks For Patriotism

In an effort to insure that Buddhism is killed off in Tibet the Chinese Communist government has announced testing will be required for all Tibetan monks and nuns to insure they are patriotic.  In others their religion is the Communist party and not Buddhism. 

China’s top official in Tibet vowed on Wednesday to evaluate Buddhist monks and nuns for their “patriotism” and install national flags in monasteries to strengthen ideological control in the region.
The ruling Communist party will deepen “assessment activities” to ensure “model harmonious monasteries” as well as “patriotic, law-abiding monks and nuns”, the region’s party chief Chen Quanguo wrote in the People’s Daily newspaper.
It was not clear on what grounds the assessments would be made. China often uses terms such as “patriotic” and “harmonious” to mean allegiance to political authorities.
The drive would be aimed at making monks and nuns “feel the warmth and care of the Party and government”, Chen added

"The love and warmth of the party"   Making them party hacks is more important than say? Thinking for one's self or having individual religious beliefs.  

The Chinese Government Censors Pollution

China's government has decided that censoring pollution is the only way to prevent its citizens from experiencing some of the worst pollution on the planet.  Under The Dome an anti pollution documentary has been removed even though its a difficult to miss all that pollution spewing into the air and water right in front of your face.

The authorities in China have a removed from websites a popular documentary which highlights the country's severe pollution problem. 

Under the Dome explains the social and health costs of pollution, and was watched by more than 100 million people online, sparking debates.

It was removed just two days after Premier Li Keqiang called pollution a blight on people's lives.
Mr Li had promised to fight it with all the government's might.

The environmental issue has dominated the current session of the Chinese parliament, the National People's Congress, in Beijing.

The newly appointed environmental protection minister, Chen Jining, had praised Under The Dome, telling reporters it should "encourage efforts by individuals to improve air quality".

But the huge popularity of an impassioned, independent film on the issue appears to have made the communist authorities nervous, correspondents say. 

When the government of the country is more afraid of its citizens than external threats that speaks volumes about the Chinese Communist government and its inability to deal with critical appraisals of government policies.


  

Beijing official heckled amid Hong Kong election anger

When negotiations began between Great Britain and China on returning the British held territory to Chinese control one of the conditions set was that Hong Kong  would retain its legal system which included freedom of the press and the right to vote for their elected representatives the lone exception  being the colonies administrator who would be chosen by the Politburo Bureau in Beijing until 2017 at which time that person would be elected by the eligible voters of Hong Kong.  

On Saturday the Chinese Communist government reneged on that provision  and announced that Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party would continue its policy of picking Hong Kong's administrator without impute from the people of the territory.  

The disruption took place as Li Fei, deputy secretary general of China's National People's Congress Standing Committee, prepared to address Hong Kong officials.
Agencies reported that as Mr Li approached the lectern, several lawmakers and demonstrators stood up with placards and a banner, chanting: "The central government broke its promise, shameless."
They were eventually escorted out by security guards. Local television reportedly showed police using pepper spray on other protesters who had amassed outside the hall.
Mr Li then continued with his speech, saying any leader who wished "Hong Kong will become an independent political entity or will change the country's socialist system will not have a political future".

 Hong Kong (CNN)

China's powerful National People's Congress Standing Committee voted Sunday to change the way Hong Kong picks its chief executive, ruling that only candidates approved by a nominating committee will be allowed to run.

A top Chinese official made clear the candidates all must "love the country and love Hong Kong."

The city's current leader insists it's a step in the right direction.

"The majority of Hong Kong citizens, namely, the 5 million qualified voters of the selection of chief executive in 2017, will be able to cast their votes to select the chief executive," said Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.

But that's not how Hong Kong's pro-democracy Occupy Central movement sees it. The group has vocally pushed for elections in which any candidate can run for chief executive. For weeks, protesters have taken to the streets.

Can China and Japan Ever Get Past World War II

That may seem like the stupidest question ever posed, but is it?  Japan and China have been at loggerheads  for the past 4 years starting with an incident in September of 2010 when a Chinese fishing boat captain rammed a Japanese Coast Guard vessel off the waters of the Senkaku islands.  Since then relations between the two countries have spiraled downward as each government blames the other for this metaphorical cold war.    Can Japan and China get passed these recriminations or is there just to much bitterness to overcome.  

  "Do you feel guilty about what Japan did to China during the war?" It was a question that I had to translate more than once during a trip to Japan with Haining Liu, a former reporter for China's state broadcaster, CCTV.It was Haining who posed that question to some of our interviewees - the oldest of whom would have been a child in 1945.
"I feel sorry for what happened," said one man. "There were many regrettable incidents," said another.
"But maybe my regret isn't enough?" added one of them, a Japanese nationalist, who argues that most school textbooks exaggerate the abuses carried out by Japanese soldiers. "No," Haining responded. "It's not enough."

Where these recriminations come from can be found in the history courses taught to Japanese students beginning in junior high school.  History textbooks cover about a million years and are presented in a single year which gives little time for reflection or discussion on the more controversial topics such as the war crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial Army during Japan's colonial period and the Second World War.    It's this lack of understanding about its history which infuriates not just the Chinese but South Koreans as well.

There are some undisputed facts. Japan was the aggressor, occupying Manchuria in northern China in 1931. A wider war began in 1937, and by the time Japan surrendered in 1945, millions of Chinese had died.
A notorious massacre occurred in the city of Nanjing, which was the capital under the Kuomintang government. Atrocities were also carried out in other Asian countries.

Have the Chinese always felt this way about Japan in the post war era?

This isn't how Haining sees it. When she grew up in the 1980s and 90s, Japanese pop culture - music, drama, and manga - was popular with young Chinese people. She and her friends, she says, had a positive attitude towards Japan.

What's interesting is that while China isn't the only Asian country to suffer under Japanese rule they seem to carry the most animosity towards Japan.

 Singapore, where I've lived since 2006, also suffered at the hands of Japanese soldiers, but there have not been anti-Japanese protests there for decades.Different sources cite different numbers of casualties, but 50,000 to 100,000 ethnically Chinese Singaporeans are believed to have been killed in what is known as the Sook Ching massacre. In a small city state of some 800,000 in 1942, that is a huge number.
I met a relative of one victim at the Civilian War Memorial on Beach Road.
"I don't blame today's generation," said Lau Kee Siong, to my surprise. I asked him why he was so much less angry than those Chinese protesters.

What changed in China that caused this shift away from a pragmatic approach to its relations with Japan?

 China also seemed to be heading towards a pragmatic relationship with Japan in the 1970s, under Chairman Mao Zedong, when the two countries restored diplomatic relations."Chinese Communist propaganda at the time emphasised the victory of the communist side during the Chinese civil war," says Robert Dujarric, director of Temple University's Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies - referring to the war between Mao's Communists and nationalists under Chang Kai-shek, which lasted until 1949.
In 1972, when the then Japanese Prime Minister, Kakuei Tanaka, apologised for what Japan did during the war, "Chairman Mao told him not to apologise because 'you destroyed the Kuomintang, you helped us come to power'," Prof Dujarric says.

  
Some trace the change to the Tiananmen Square  protests for greater democratic freedoms which was crushed by the government with the use of military force 4 June 1989.

"Before the 4 June, it portrayed the Communist Party as victorious and glorious - it defeated the nationalist Kuomintang army in the civil war. But after 4 June, the government started emphasising China as a victim," says Prof Akio Takahara, who teaches contemporary Chinese politics at Tokyo University.
The Communist Party now casts itself as the party which ended a century of humiliation at the hands of outsiders, he says.
"And the way they do it is to breed hatred against the most recent invader and aggressor."

China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

In many ways, the PLA is weaker than it looks – and more dangerous.

In April 2003, the Chinese Navy decided to put a large group of its best submarine talent on the same boat as part of an experiment to synergize its naval elite. The result? Within hours of leaving port, the Type 035 Ming III class submarine sank with all hands lost. Never having fully recovered from this maritime disaster, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is still the only permanent member of the United Nations Security Council never to have conducted an operational patrol with a nuclear missile submarine.

While recent years have witnessed a tremendous Chinese propaganda effort aimed at convincing the world that the PRC is a serious military player that is owed respect, outsiders often forget that China does not even have a professional military. The PLA, unlike the armed forces of the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other regional heavyweights, is by definition not a professional fighting force. Rather, it is a “party army,” the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Indeed, all career officers in the PLA are members of the CCP and all units at the company level and above have political officers assigned to enforce party control. Likewise, all important decisions in the PLA are made by Communist Party committees that are dominated by political officers, not by operators. This system ensures that the interests of the party’s civilian and military leaders are merged, and for this reason new Chinese soldiers entering into the PLA swear their allegiance to the CCP, not to the PRC constitution or the people of China.

Given the state of modern military hardware and training undertaken in those countries China might come into conflict with you'd think that they not would have developed a professional military but had moved away from Soviet era military doctrine of political officers and centralized command and control.  

Intense and realistic training is dangerous business, and the American maxim that the more you bleed during training the less you bleed during combat doesn’t translate well in a Leninist military system. Just the opposite. China’s military is intentionally organized to bureaucratically enforce risk-averse behavior, because an army that spends too much time training is an army that is not engaging in enough political indoctrination.Beijing’s worst nightmare is that the PLA could one day forget that its number one mission is protecting the Communist Party’s civilian leaders against all its enemies – especially when the CCP’s “enemies” are domestic student or religious groups campaigning for democratic rights, as happened in 1989 and 1999, respectively.

What's implied is that the Chinese Communist Party and its leaders fear a military which is not only professional but has the ability think strategically and act independently of the central government.  Lacking those qualities how would China's military react to an actual armed conflict?  

 For that reason, the PLA has to engage in constant “political work” at the expense of training for combat. This means that 30 to 40 percent of an officer’s career (or roughly 15 hours per 40-hour work week) is wasted studying CCP propaganda, singing patriotic songs, and conducting small group discussions on Marxist-Leninist theory. And when PLA officers do train, it is almost always a cautious affair that rarely involves risky (i.e., realistic) training scenarios.

Yet none of this should be comforting to China’s potential military adversaries. It is precisely China’s military weakness that makes it so dangerous. Take the PLA’s lack of combat experience, for example. A few minor border scraps aside, the PLA hasn’t seen real combat since the Korean War. This appears to be a major factor leading it to act so brazenly in the East and South China Seas. Indeed, China’s navy now appears to be itching for a fight anywhere it can find one. Experienced combat veterans almost never act this way. Indeed, history shows that military commanders that have gone to war are significantly less hawkish than their inexperienced counterparts. Lacking the somber wisdom that comes from combat experience, today’s PLA is all hawk and no dove.