Well, looks like we’re going to have to talk about China. Really talk about China. Much of the world, of Australia, and of the left respectively have avoided the conversation for years. But we could can’t do so anymore.
At the same time, we have to avoid being stampeded by a propaganda push by other interests. The bad China stories have come too suspiciously simultaneously to be accepted uninterrogated.
The two core charges that have surfaced are inter-related. Firstly, that a mass incarceration system in Xinjiang is racially based — around the Uyghurs — and extended to the virtual imprisonment of the entire population.
Secondly, that China’s oft-reported practice of taking transplant organs from executed criminals has been extended and reversed, so that religious and other minorities — the Uyghurs, Falun Gong, “house Christians” — are now being executed to supply both a private organ market and the needs of the elite.
Both accusations are ghastly enough. If they are in fact combined processes, we’re in another world entirely. The mass detention of Uyghurs and the hyper-control of everyday life in Xinjiang is so widely reported it seems impossible to deny, or believe that it has been wholly manufactured. Whatever spin there might be put on it seems irrelevant, given what is documented.
Recent stories have portrayed it as a product of President Xi Jinping’s reaction to a series of terrorist knife attacks, including one in 2014 that left more than 30 people dead. But the transformation of Xinjiang had been going on long before that, with millions of Han Chinese moved in there, such that Uyghurs are now a minority community.
That process points to another inconvenient fact, for both left and right: the internationalism of China’s Maoism and Marxism — once genuine enough — is yielding not merely to a national supremacism, but to one based around Han Chinese ethnicity. That is combined with a state-led push towards post-capitalism, combining mass renewable energy rollout, additive/3D manufacturing, robotics and new materials, to jump forward to non-market systems of allocation for infrastructure and other production.
With a private sector situated within that frame, the nationwide “social credit” system subsumes wages as a social control and allocation device. Export-import then runs through countries strung along the Belt and Road Initiative, in hock to China for their development (which, unlike Western IMF development, actually delivered infrastructure).
The system is thus, through various transformations, multiple, to put it mildly. Retro Cold War ideologues like Chris Uhlmann in today’s Nein papers can call the lifting of 700 million people out of poverty a “canard”, but the fact remains that China’s totalitarian control has been successful because provision has been successful; its post-1979 Marxist mixed system has delivered most of the world’s growth out of poverty, while India, west Asia and Africa have stagnated in the net of the neoliberal system.
That only doesn’t matter to people who care less about human betterment than about scoring a cheap political point. That is also a clue to the sudden and collective attacks on China from Tony Abbott and Eric Abetz. Doubtless these two gentlemen have no concern other than freedom, but it certainly doesn’t hurt the anti-China push. The international groups pushing the lethal organ harvesting charge appear to be created around that specific issue, which gives pause.
But even if it were a question of the Uyghur mass detention alone, no one on the left can pass by this any longer without a collective deep investigation. If it is as said, then we are the equivalent of the UK, offshore from Dachau. It’s worth remembering that a lot of anti-Nazi criticism in the 1930s was muted because it was seen to be coddling British imperialism. And it’s sadly predictable that Paul Keating — who reveres Churchill as the politician of the century — fails the Churchill test when actual concentration camps are presented to him.
If there really is a supply-by-execution of transplant organs, with or without a tie-in to Uyghur camps, that is simply Treblinka. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.
If — if — it is true, then Jinping’s neo-Stalinism has evolved into something that combines the annihilating worst of the three major systems of modernity. The right can do what it likes; the global left needs to establish an international, independent commission to assess the evidence of what is occurring in these two areas, and their intertwining.
And if it proves to be the case then we must simply recognise the presence of radical evil on a mass scale and curse our prior lassitude — but not let it distract us from present action.
Just who are ‘the Global left’ and ‘us’ Guy?
Well that is a question, but its not one that needs to be fully or wholly snswered before some sort of peocess begins. To a degree such a process would be self-constituting
Not even sure what they’d be doing if this global left existed. A report?
It’d be great to get as much factual information on whether organ harvesting is a significant factor in deciding to execute someone (execution already being abhorrent to most people in places that abolished such awful punishments). But everywhere there are activists working hard to crack government secrecy on awful policies, do they drop this work to swing into China and fix it up?
Surely this is a job for the literally 1 billion people closer to the problem? I know it isn’t easy there for dissenters but it isn’t like it is easy or even easier for foreigners to get to the bottom of it.
And the experience of watching reporting on our insane torture camps exposing a policy of deliberate neglect leading to bugger all change does not inspire confidence that merely knowing about it will do anything.
Wouldn’t a solution to it look more like how our system of torture camps is being undermined by the people necessary to run it? How about global guilt trip on the Chinese medical profession? Someone has to do the labour of harvesting organs.
Draco
If the lethal organ harvesting process exists – if – then it is of an order utterly beyond anything on Manus and Nauru. And you know it. Ridiculous whataboutery.
I’d been waiting for this. As usual, Rundle dissects this complex issue to reveal larger forces at play. It’s refreshing to get this bigger picture.
But first, in terms of post-capitalism and reputation as a new currency, none of the mainland Chinese I have spoken with say that their social credit is being tracked. Of course, it may be in the future, but we shouldn’t unthinkingly imagine the Big Brother scenario before seeing the evidence.
Secondly, in terms of harvesting organs from non-Han minorities and faiths, that would indeed be a heinous act, which should be disowned by Australia. But where is the evidence for it?
Sinophobia is part of our cultural legacy. Practices like organ harvesting, even if speculative, re-awaken that demon. If evidence came forward, I would certainly change my mind about the Chinese system. But I wait for evidence.
On the organ harvesting, and despite the number of “If’s” employed by GRundle, he is insufficiently skeptical.
If you travel to thegrayzonedotcom, you will find a report by a Ryan McCarthy, on Sept 30th, headlined;
“Reports on China ‘organ harvesting’ derive from front groups of far-right cult Falun Gong”
And, sub-headlined;
“A wave of corporate media reports on Chinese organ harvesting rely without acknowledgement on front groups connected to the far-right Falun Gong cult, whose followers believe “Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the Communist Party.”
The report takes you all the way from the “China Tribunal”, to “The Epoch Times”.
And, along the way;
“On its website, the China Tribunal says that it was “initiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), an international not for profit organisation, with headquarters in Australia and National Committees in the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.”
HQ in Oz, and 4 other ‘bases’………………’Oooh, look, the “5 eyes!”
That report names names, connects the dots and explains the network.
But, hey, if you fancy something more ‘mainstream’, as McCarthy’s report notes;
“The Epoch Times, which uses the slogan “Truth and Tradition,” has marketed itself as just another conservative, pro-Trump media outlet.
But NBC News published a major exposé in August revealing it to be the media arm of the opposition cult Falun Gong. The report details the bizarre workings of the Falun Gong organization, showing how the Epoch Times is carving a place for itself in American right-wing media.
NBC News found that the Falun Gong website spent more than $1.5 million on roughly 11,000 pro-Trump advertisements on Facebook in just six months, “more than any organization outside of the Trump campaign itself, and more than most Democratic presidential candidates have spent on their own campaigns.”
In the times of increasing ‘journalism by the regurgitation of press releases’, increased skepticism is strongly recommended.
I said it should be independently investigated by a political formation creating its own body – similar to the Russell tribunal on US war crimes in Vietnam. How much more sceptical can one be? Theres got to be something a little more than a report on ‘thegrayzone’ to refute it
Bullshit! Read the freakin’ report – track the links, go and and read the CV’s of the paid propagandists involved, understand the history of cults.
That’s soft, Rundle, in the extreme – it’s empty.
‘Something a little more than a report on ‘the grayzone’ to refute it’???
A few years back, I had my appreciation of the value of genuine ‘investigative journalism’ enhanced by reading this book;
https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2013/11/26/life-and-loathing-in-greater-israel-a-review-of-max-blumenthals-goliath/
I’m currently reading this – https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-management-of-savagery-max-blumenthal/book/9781788737432.html
“How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, Isis and Donald Trump”
Max Blumenthal, son of Clintonite (O’Bomber’s and Killary’s ‘go to guy’ to bomb Libya), Sydney, founded The Grayzone.
Blumenthal spends time, ‘on the ground’, particularly in Latin America (Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, etc), but also the Middle East, Syria specifically in recent years.
I’m one of those who has become increasingly tired of a) people who bang on about left and right, and b) don’t do their goddamn homework.
And, the turning point, was when I read, in the early ’90’s, this book;
https://history.wisc.edu/publications/the-politics-of-heroin-cia-complicity-in-the-global-drug-trade/
Did you know McCoy wrote that as his PhD thesis, got invited by the Church Committee to ‘come home’ and testify, got death threats, came to Australia to ‘hide’, and while he was here, wrote a book about the Nugan Hand bank’s involvement in Whitlam’s dismissal? The book’s in the National Archive.
So spare me shit about ‘the grayzone’.
I’ve just had 2 responses to your response/comment sent off to ‘moderation’, Rundle.
Those responses merely explained some of the background as to why I completely disagree with your response, and why I value the journalism employed at places like the Grayzone (e.g. Blumenthal’s writing, including a couple of his excellent books).
I’m getting the discomforting impression you’re being protected from dissident opinions, by algo’s, yourself.
I’ve already informed ‘Boss’ at Crikey, numerous times, that I’m heartily sick of this ridiculous smothering of alternative views.
The end is nigh.
And, you don’t do your homework.
Tell ya what, Rundle, you get ‘Boss’ to release the 2 responses sent off to ‘moderation’, and we can have an open conversation here at Crikey, no less, about various matters pertaining to; imperialism, colonialism, orientialism, terrorism, militarism, racism, fascism, and a whole lot of other ‘isms’ Australian ‘journalists and commentators’ either refuse to acknowledge, or mention only in passing, before heading off to the next click bait ‘meme’.
Then we could discuss seminal works, like Prof Alfred McCoy’s ‘The Politics of Heroin’, his retreat to Australia and National Archive(d) book on the Nugan Hand Bank’s role in Whitlam’s dismissal, Blumenthal’s (the founder of The Grayzone) works, such as “Gomarrah…”, “Goliath…..”, and “The Management of Savagery”, and take it from there.
You know, realpolitik – and history.
Crikey! We might even finish up talking about Brian Toohey’s more recent seminal work; “Secret; The Making of Australia’s Security State”.
Excellent book, and thoroughly trashes the ‘reputation’ of Australia’s policy experts, and the rubbish journalists (like Ninefax’s Hartcher) who pontificate about Orstrayan ‘vayues’ and righteousness.
So, up for it?
As we continue to be submitted to the limbo of ‘awaiting moderation’, I feel it necessary to provide a little more background on the outfit you dismissed with an imperious wave of dismissal i.e The Grayzone.
Max Blumenthal is the founder of the slighted outfit.
To quote;
“Max Blumenthal (born December 18, 1977) is an American author, journalist, and blogger. He was awarded the 2014 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Notable Book Award for his book Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel (2013).[1][2] He was formerly a writer for AlterNet,[3] The Daily Beast, Al Akhbar, and Media Matters for America,[4] and was selected as a Fellow of the Nation Institute.[5] Blumenthal established The Grayzone in 2015 and continues to edit and write for the website.[6]
As of 2019, Blumenthal has published four books. His first, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party (2009), made The New York Times bestsellers list that year………….
Blumenthal’s articles and video documentaries have been published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Independent Film Channel, Salon, The Real News, Al Jazeera English,[7] Sputnik,[16] and the Columbia Journalism Review.[17]
Blumenthal founded The Grayzone website in 2015 as a vehicle to examine “America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions”….
Blumenthal won the Online News Association’s Independent Feature Award for his 2002 article, “Day of the Dead”, published in Salon…….
In 2010, he covered the federal immigration enforcement program known as Operation Streamline for Truthdig. “The program represents the entrenchment of a parallel nonproductive economy promoting abuse behind the guise of law enforcement and crime deterrence”, he wrote….
In 2014, Blumenthal covered hunger strikes by undocumented migrants held in the privatized Northwest Detention Center for The Nation………
In 2010, Blumenthal wrote about the rise of Islamophobia in the world since the 9/11 attacks in the US and other terrorist events in Europe. In TomDispatch, he described what he said was a trans-Atlantic Islamophobic political network that “spans continents, extending from Tea Party activists here to the European far right………
Following the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, Blumenthal made a documentary film titled Je ne suis pas Charlie about government crackdowns against Muslims in France. He explored what he believed were the roots of anti-Muslim sentiment in French colonialism in Muslim-majority territories.[…………..
….books: Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel (2013) ……..The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza (2015)………..2009 book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party………..2019): The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump.”
That’s the founder, and still editor of The Grayzone.
And, I’ve read a lot of what he has written, from short form to books, and I’m vastly better informed for having done so.
So, when you, Rundle, suggest;
“Theres got to be something a little more than a report on ‘thegrayzone’ to refute it”,
I say, they’ll do, as a reference point, way more so than someone who clearly has no idea what they do, or stand for.
You need to employ a much wider lens – you’re sounding like a sook.
But you seem to be ignoring the fact that i suggested scepticism in my article, and a process of inquiry. You’re accusing me of something i’ve explicitly argued against, rushing to judgement.
But at the same time, simply taking one source, and using it as an easy way to dismiss disturbing allegations is simply lax.
I was interested to see what Guy Rundle had to say about the Uyghur issue in China. A couple of things the Han were moved into that region during the cultural revolution. It was punishment for the intellectuals. At the same time the Chinese government persecuted, burnt down, destroyed mosques in the region. When I went there after September 11 I found Urumqi a fascinating place, peaceful too. I visited mosques and communities and one thing I noted was that the Uyghur families were lucky because what was happening in the Stani countries didn’t seem to have reached this area, at least their children weren’t being radicalised. You have to remember Mongolia has a huge influence in this area economically. They flew into Urumqi to shop. Another thing I noticed is that out of all the areas in China I went to Urumqi was the only one that had another language on its street signs, Turkish.
Times have changed and eventually the radical influence has made its way there and China, who will never support dissident, have brought in the big boot. It makes very sad knowing this. I wanted to take my parents there but like Egypt it isn’t going to happen.
As for the organ harvesting. Hmmm lets just say I doubt if China is the only one who has problems with that. I doubt you will find any government sanctioned documents in any country which states it is a supported standard practice but I would be interested to see if anyone has asked them?
You may be aware of all or some of this, Delerious, but the reason Turkish was the other language of that street signage is because the Uighur are “Turkmen”.
In Syria, there have been 000’s of Chinese Uighurs fighting the Syrian Arab Army under the banner of the “Turkistan Islamic Party”, and alongside and embedded within ISIS and the various manifestations of Al Qaeda.
When OBL was extending Al Qaeda’s reach in the 90’s, having done the work for the US to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan, he and his not only ‘pitched in’ in Bosnia and Chechnya, to further US ambitions to give Russia (by then) more ‘black eyes’, but he also had recruitment drives in Xinjiang, and was successful enough to have Uighurs fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Even Wikipedia acknowledges;
“The Turkistan Islamic Party in Syria (TIP; Arabic: الحزب الإسلامي التركستاني في سوريا) is the Syrian branch of the Turkistan Islamic Party, an armed Uyghur Salafist jihadist group with a presence in the Syrian Civil War. While the TIP has been active in Syria, the organization’s core leadership is based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with a presence in its home territory of China.”
And, to quote George Galloway, from late last year;
“In the mid-1990s I gave a lecture to the International Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party about knowledge I had acquired through working with the Saudi opposition in London that someone called Osama Bin Laden had been oriented by the United States towards the Xinjiang region in China to agitate amongst the Uighur Muslim minority there, to exacerbate their alienation from the state, to take advantage of the weaknesses of Chinese State policy towards their Muslim citizens. And to sow terror.
So novel was the name Osama Bin Laden then that the International Department cadres crowded round me at the end asking me to spell his name for them. So important was my news that a week later I had to do it again for the deputy foreign minister of China.”
Much obliged David. I believe nothing from any side, but appreciate a variety of perspectives. Regards.
I’ve long held the view, Dog’s, the wider the lens, the better informed.
And, as you allude to, make sure the skepticism machine is always fuelled up.
I knew of Falun Gong and their conspiracy theories on organ harvesting. I always thought it was interesting in that Chinese one child policy did not include minorities so Uyghur and other minorities could have as many children as they wanted. Not a society trying to get rid of minorities. Also Han organs would be so much likely to be compatible then minorities.
Yes I know Uyghurs came through from Turkey with the Silk Road.
I was not aware that OBL was trying to enlist Uyghurs but as you can see from what I wrote it doesn’t really surprise me just you have tried to suggest they were doing it prior to September 11 which I’m a little sceptical about. The Uyghurs were still recovering from the cultural revolution I’m not sure if they would be open to fighting at that stage. About 10 years later I started hearing about dissidents.
Cheers, Delerious, thanks for the response.
Well, urban people wrre exiled to Xinjiang during the cultural revolution. They happened to be Han. The process of turning the Uighers into a minority is more recent.
And erm, who else, pray tell, has been accused of organ harvesting?
Sorry I thought you had done your homework on this. I’ll leave you to it.
Delerious, my man, another excellent response!
Referring to the Chinese president as Jinping is disrespectful ignorance. Like referring to Donald Trump as Donald. He can be Donald Trump or Trump, but never just Donald. Call him Xi Jinping or Xi.
It’s probably a little disrespectful to call Xi Jinping “Jinping”. On the other hand, the author – not one to Godwin lightly – uses the name “Treblinka” to describe the actions of Xi and his government. Perhaps it wasn’t done out of ignorance?
Why would the author of this article wish to treat the subject of it with respect? Why should we?
I was thinking the same thing, Mr. Raven.
I’m quite happy with disrespect to both Jinping and Donald.
But we say ‘donald’ and ‘boris’ and scomo all the time…
“The bad China stories have come too suspiciously simultaneously”.
GR, I’m interested in your take on this. A 400 page dossier leaks out of China?!!??
Either it’s real, and some powerful opponents of Xi thought it worth the risk, which would have to be substantial, or it’s fake in which case who put it together and leaked it.
Prima facie you would suspect it is real, and that sends a chill through me as much as anything. Political machinations against Xi within China are as scary a prospect as anything else I care to imagine.
I was asked this morning what purpose these constant attacks on our biggest customer by our Parliamentarians and our Media served and whether I thought that the CIA might have a hand in them through the ASPI et al – I answered that I had no idea
Tell ya what, Tezz, a few bits of history to consider; Allende in Chile, The Phoenix Program in SE Asia, Mossedagh in Iran, Iran Contra, 100+ attempts to assassinate Castro, El Salvador, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Haiti, Gary Webb’s ‘Dark Alliance’, about the CIA/DEA/FBI feeding vast amounts of cocaine (and, crack, because it was cheaper for ‘cough’ non-whites) to Freeway Rick Ross in Sth L.A., and the list goes on and on….and on.
Prior to the Church Committee in the US, in the mid- 70’s, the ‘soft power’ budget was the province of the CIA. Post Church, it shifted to the State Department, and is now mostly channeled through either the ‘National Endowment for Democracy’, or ‘USAID’.
Nazis such as the (Stefan) Banderistas in Ukraine (e.g. the Azov Battalion, the Right Sector), various Polish outfits, a number in Scandinavia (e.g Sweden, the home of lawless Assange hatred), all receive extensive funding from NED and USAID.
If only ‘journalists’ would pay attention, and/or employ more ‘auditors’.
Plain as the nose on your dial – if one looks, and can read.
I just submitted an informed response to your comment, Tezz, and off it went to moderation, again!