Apologies for the delayed response, and for reviving a dead thread. Bad habit of mine.

Re: Taffy 3 etc., I should have said “might as well be ancient history”. It’s not for you and me, but I suspect it is for most people in this country. Certainly most people under 40 or even 50.

I don’t read Zaphod’s comments about the PRC’s growing power as appeasement or homage. I read them as warnings. As for why he lives in HK, I assume it’s for professional reasons. He has said that he will be moving elsewhere when he retires, so it would appear that he does not want to live under the sway of the CCP any longer than he has to. In the meantime, I view his bulletins from HK and the PRC in the same way that I would have viewed William Shirer’s dispatches from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, if I had been around then: as useful information/intelligence from somebody who is on the spot.

Barry,

Yes, I read the VDH piece on the PRC’s weak points vis-a-vis the U.S. I hope he’s right, but I’m not as sanguine as he is.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2021/06/08/us-universities-slip-in-an-influential-world-ranking/

Maybe. Maybe not.

Here’s another take:
https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/25/chinas-greater-east-asia-co-prosperity-sphere/

Or perhaps put another way, “Live by trying to out-capitalist those capitalist running dogs; die by making the wrong assumptions about capitalism”. (Did someone mention Yamamoto?)

Disagreeing with Zaphod is fine. Criticizing Zaphod is fine. But the petty insults in which you often engage isn’t fine. I’ve asked you to stop – don’t know whether you’ve seen my previous requests, so I’m asking you again. It takes away from your arguments rather than enhancing them, and I don’t like petty squabbling on the blog. I do allow some of it, of course – we’re all human. But you’ve been indulging in way too much of it re Zaphod.

I realize that, among other things, Zaphod is annoying. That’s on purpose. So why rise to the bait?

I’m not making excuses for the message and the methods of totalitarians. Appeasement is appeasement.

He is a man without a country because he chooses to live in Hong Kong. He deigns not to live in western countries, ironically while moaning that “his people” need their own country. Actions and words.

You know what ancient means. Is 1995 ancient history? if so, 2001, and 2020 were ancient history.

CEO of apple who chooses to build his gee gaws in China; there was an ancient history quote about capitalists and rope, but our mega capitalists don’t think their necks will get a rope burn or spine snap. The CCP crocodile will eat them too.

We have serious problems, throwing in race, religion, and homage to the CCP and China are not conductive to a serious discussion. But that’s a feature not a bug.

Please read this:

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-end-of-merit/

Relevant quote:

“Only 5 percent of American college students major in engineering, compared with 33 percent in China; as of 2016, China graduated 4.7 million STEM students versus 568,000 in the United States, as well as six times as many students with engineering and computer science bachelor’s degrees. “In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields,” Apple CEO Tim Cook has observed, revealing one rationale for keeping virtually all the company’s production in the Middle Kingdom.”

Taffy 3, The Bulge, and the Manhattan Project are ancient history. This is not the country it was in 1945, 1965, or even 1995. Zaphod’s (and Goldman’s) warnings about China’s technological, manufacturing, and engineering capacity are valid and deserve a serious response. You sneer at Zaphod for not having a country of his own. You’re right: he doesn’t. Zaphod is a man without a country precisely because of the demographic/political changes he keeps banging on about. His fate is therefore instructive. The United States is not South Africa, but there are powerful people in this country who view South Africa as a model for us. I think there are features of our political geography and social and political culture that will frustrate their plans, but I’m not at all complacent about that.

You don’t like what Zaphod has to say. I don’t like it either, and have taken issue with some of it. But whether we like it or not isn’t the point. The point is, Is he right? You’re blaming the messenger.

Many years ago, even in those olden days before you were born, similar geniuses as you declared the USSR and or Nazi Germany were the the way of the future, they “worked.” Sad story chappie. Sad.

Congratulations, you know where to send the rent money. I’ve got some missionaries in India and Africa that I’ll send it to, it’s doing you no good after all.

High speed trains don’t give CCP men any women that will carry on the family line. Their demographics suck, chappie. Real world.

Your best hope the Thais will take you. Will the CCP allow you to flee with enough to live in the means which you have become accustomed? Sad to be you.

Don’t believe me… Then how about Spengler, the International Money Jew Par Excelllence:

https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/wake-up-america-the-world-just-isnt-that-into-you/

“The people with big jobs in Washington came of age in the 1980s and 1990s, when America was the technological marvel of the world, and American inventions created the digital age. We haven’t done a lot lately except code some complicated software.

China has installed about 80% of the world’s 5G mobile broadband capacity, the carrier for the Fourth Industrial Revolution as much as railroads were for the First Industrial Revolution, and is moving much faster towards smart cities, automated ports, autonomous vehicles, self-programming robots and a wealth of other 5G applications.

American supply chains can’t keep up with the $5 trillion in demand that the US Treasury dumped onto consumers, so America is running a $1 trillion a year balance of payments deficit. The pull of demand has spiked the inflation rate above 5%.

The Federal Reserve and the White House say this is transitory, but US industries aren’t investing in new equipment. In fact, capital expenditures for US industrial companies this year will be 35% lower than in 2019, and not much better next year.

The US isn’t investing in energy, or much else. It doesn’t boast a single company to compete with Huawei, Ericsson, or Nokia in 5G broadband. China, with its robust supply chains and abundance and diversity of skilled workers and engineers, is likely to get a jump on the United States in the new technologies that will transform economic life.“

Far more than I have… and so much, much more than you have… this guy has been around in China during its rise and met the movers and shakers, seen the factories and done the deals. Believe him. I feel sorry for poor old Goldman. He’s a genuine American Patriot of the old school as well as his natural Israel Thing and he’s been pumpkin out warnings Cassandra-like for ages and nobody seems to listen.