Friday, February 22, 2019

Tom Luongo — Merkel Draws the Line Against Trump


Merkel refuses to make Germany a powerless colony of the US in addition to be an obedient vassal.

As always, follow the money. See also Tom Luongo's Merkel Stands Against Trump’s Energy Dominance.

Tom Luongo
Nafeez Ahmed

See also

Moon of Alabama
U.S. Efforts To Block Huawei Gives China An Advantage







5 comments:

Konrad said...

U.S. efforts to block Huawei gives China an advantage

The U.S. fears that China will soon be able to compete with it in computer chip design and fabrication.

In other words the U.S. fears China’s ability to compete in free enterprise.

For example, Apple increases the price of each iPhone model by about $100 per year. However last year Apple jumped $230, revealing its $1,099 iPhone XS Max one year after debuting the $999 iPhone X.

Now Samsung has unveiled its new “Galaxy Fold” at a price of $2,000. Next year the price may be $4,000.

Western and South Korean phone products have become so expensive that customers must take out mortgages to afford them.

Moreover the products have non-replaceable batteries that wear out after a year or two, forcing customers to keep buying new phones. And the newer smart phones don’t even have headphone jacks, so that customers are forced to buy wireless Bluetooth headphones, or a pair of headphones that connects to a Lightning port. Presumably the smartphone manufacturers have stock in Bluetooth.

Meanwhile Huawei offers good quality smartphones at a tiny fraction of these prices. And unlike the Samsung’s new “Galaxy Fold,” Huawei phones have regular headphone jacks, and are not as thick and heavy as a brick.

Therefore Huawei products must be outlawed, so that Western and South Korean companies can continue to rape their customers with ever-higher prices. This is easier than competing with China on a fair and level playing field.

Screwing customers and using the government to eliminate competition is the American way.

Oligarchs and their toadies call it the “free market.”

+++++++++++++++++++

Also, when the USA calls Huawei phones a “security threat,” the USA means that Huawei phones are not designed with technological “back doors” that let the US government monitor all cell phone users.

Again, spying on the citizenry is called the "free market."

Konrad said...

The “disintegration” of global capitalism could unleash world war 3, warns top EU economist

So a move from capitalism to a balance of capitalism and socialism will trigger world war?

No. The next world war will be triggered by the global depletion of resources, especially food and drinkable water. China has fished out all the sea food from the ocean around China. Therefore Chinese fishing vessels must roam the world, stealing whatever they can, and fleeing before local coast guards can catch them.

In many places on the planet, water tables have been so depleted that local populations must dig deeper and deeper wells in a desperate chase for what little water remains. In North Africa the destruction of Libya was more about stealing Libya’s buried water than Libya’s oil. The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer was created 11,000 years ago when the Sahara was not a desert.

Wars, thirst, and famine will dramatically reduce the human population whether we like it or not, since humans are rodents who cannot control themselves as a whole.

At east Israel will go down with the rest. ("It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine...")

Regarding the growth in Western military spending, this does not translate into more numerous and destructive weapons. Spending keeps growing because each year the military contractors use new scams to increase the flow of federal dollars into the personal pockets of executives at Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, etc.

As a result, U.S. weapons systems today are ten times more expensive than they were in 2000, with one tenth the quality and effectiveness.

Konrad said...

Merkel draws the line against Trump

You mean draws the line against Washington. Trump himself is powerless, and wouldn’t know how to wipe his ass without help from undocumented servants from south of the US border.

A day ago Trump buckled to the Military Industrial Complex, and announced that there will be no withdrawal from Syria after all. No surprise there.

Regarding NATO, it is true that Germany is tired of being militarily dictated to by the USA, but this does not mean the formation of an EU military. The Eurozone would have to pay for that, and the euro-zone cannot create euros out of thin air. Only the bankers can do that. In an increasingly euro-skeptic Europe, an EU military won’t happen. There’s no money for it.

Better for Germany to simply remain on good terms with Russia, and try to cope with Israeli demands regarding Iran.

Kaivey said...

Some grim stuff there, Konrad. People are mad, but the world could have been saved. We could have invested our enormous wealth to create new Green technology which would have created more wealth, and more rich people.

We could have controlled world population growth, and one good way to have done this would have to to improve the economies of third world countries, instead of exploiting then plundering them into poverty.

For many people in the world there is no social security or state funded healthcare, so they have big families in the hope that at least some children will survive and will be dedicated to look after their parents when they get old. The parents hope these children will take care of them in old age.

In advanced economics populations get smaller, because many people are happy with just one or no children. They don't have to worry about someone taking care of them in old age.

Social security and state funded healthcare could save the world, I have often written in the comments section of conservative sites. Sadly, their selfishness could destroy the world.

When I was a young boy my parents sent me to Sunday School and the teachers would describe to us the difference between Heaven and Hell.

In hell, they said, the tables were full of food but everyone was starving because they only had long spoons and so couldn't feed themselves. But in Heaven the tables were also full of food but everyone was well fed, because with the long spoons they fed each other.

We on the left weren't asking for communism, just for a little bit of capitalism and a little bit of socialism. There was still going to be a big free market.

Noah Way said...

Germany wants its army back so they can use it to enforce, er ... "protect" the EU.

@Kaivey, 'free market' is an oxymoron.