I think you are most likely correct.
New thread by Brian Cates, to see images etc click the link, and I posted the column mentioned on FR a few minutes ago. Freepmail me to get on/off this ping list.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1241827896110563328.html
NEW COLUMN ALERT!!!
One Belt One Road...One Virus
Why Countries Outsourcing Their Vital National Security Infrastructure To A Totalitarian Regime Like China’s CCP Is A Huge Mistake
One Belt, One Road ... One Virus
Commentary As the entire world has struggled to cope with the fallout from the CCP virus, all eyes ...
https://www.theepochtimes.com/one-belt-one-road-one-virus_3281590.html
I read a book a long time back written by a man named Thomas P.M. Barnett called “The Pentagon’s New Map”.
He talked an awful lot about China in that book.
amazon.com/dp/B000OVLIO2/…
I bought that book and read it after catching Barnett on a PBS show giving the presentation that became the basis for the book.
In it, he argues that TRADE with China & the West developing extremely close ties with the CCP would avert war & lead to China’s “opening up”.
I don’t read Thomas P.M. Barnett any more.
Because he was wrong.
Closer ties & outsourcing our vital infrastructure to the CCP did not ‘open up’ China so much as it opened US up to being vulnerable to a hostile regime.
This was painfully apparent long ago, the current pandemic only makes all this more starkly evident.
I wrote this column on China & what the NBA’s self-censoring illustrated last October.
Who Doesn’t See the China Threat at This Point?
https://www.theepochtimes.com/who-doesnt-see-the-china-threat-at-this-point_3122768.html
I’m going to quote from that column:
“Since then [the NBA self-censoring scandal], the entire free world has had an eye-opening look at exactly how China intends to use its vast economic leverage outside its borders.
And what an ugly look it was.”
“The Chinese regime doesn’t have to explicitly demand that Western companies punish its critics for them.
Many people who run these companies will ***leap to censor and oppress their own employees*** without waiting for the Chinese to demand it.”
“Many top companies are so determined to keep access to the Chinese market at all costs, they will enforce speech codes inside their own industry just as stringently as the Chinese regime would do themselves if the business were inside mainland China.”
“The popular theory that was sold for decades was that by engaging China and opening our doors to them, we were going to “democratize” them. Take a good look at what you have seen recently, as U.S. corporate interests bowed the knee to actual tyrants.”
“The exact opposite [of what was promised by globalists like Thomas P.M. Barnett has] happened.
China is making full use of its financial clout to force Western corporations into acting like political extensions of itself.”
“As historian @VDHanson stated in a recent column for The Daily Signal:
“U.S. foreign policy toward China seemed to be based on the belief that the more China modernized and the more affluent its citizens became, the more inevitable Chinese political freedom would be.” “
““Supposedly, a free-market China would drop its communist past to become a Westernized democracy such as Japan...Once China fully joined the family of successful, law-abiding nations, it would empower Western freedoms and help create a stable international order.”
Hanson starkly concluded:
““None of that came close to happening.”
Bureaucratic globalists eager to cash in told themselves fantasies about CCP leadership.
China had accelerated its theft of military, digital, and IP technology during the Obama years. It was poised to take full advantage of the shift to 5G. And, on trade, China had been taking advantage of the United States for years.
President Donald Trump entered the White House in early 2017 faced with the difficult task of reversing years of political elites in the West allowing this kind of subversive activity.
With U.S. politicians, corporations, and think tanks–many of whom have financial ties to China—resisting him every step of the way, Trump has been fighting to restore balance to the U.S.–China relationship.
With the growing NBA and Blizzard scandals, a whole lot of people who had been unaware of how China is deliberately subverting U.S. institutions suddenly were treated to amazing spectacles of financially motivated cowardice in the face of tyranny.
OK I’ll stop quoting that October column of mine right there.
I want to focus on something.
It’s **easy** for many people to clearly see how the CCP pulls the NBA’s strings & makes it dance to China’s tune.
Let’s look at something NOT so obvious for many people.
The CCP is also pulling the strings of MANY NEWS MEDIA OUTLETS IN THE WEST, and this puppetmaster/puppet relationship is still invisible to many people.
The CCP has been buying control & influence over Western media outlets for decades. Slowly. Carefully. Quietly.
It took the NBA scandal to make people see how China influences a big American sports institution.
But it took the CCP Virus to starkly flush out into the open how the CCP is also influences many big American NEWS MEDIA INSTITUTIONS.
The American public just spent over a week watching mainstream US News media reporters functioning as de facto proxies for the CCP try to browbeat a US President into accepting CCP talking points.
They utterly failed to subdue Trump of course, but by even attempting this...
...many of these political activists disguised as reporters exposed their true allegiances.
The CCP and several other countries have been investing massive amounts of $$$ into media outlets in the West to buy themselves influence and good press.
China’s CCP government in last 5 months tried to cover up a virus outbreak, let it spread all over the world, continuing to lie about it until after mid-January.
Which Western media outlets are trying to HIDE that this happened, and why are they trying to hide it?
Well these daily press briefings has flushed the CCP-sympathetic propagandists right out into the open where we can all see them.
And the reason they are putting so much effort into lying about the CCP Virus is because...that’s what they are PAID to do.
They’re doing their JOB.
Foreign countries like China, Russia, Qatar, Iran and others have been BUYING themselves positive press here in the West for decades.
The @EpochTimes has been exposing the “Paid Propaganda As News Coverage” scam for years.
The Paid-Propaganda-as-News Scam
Commentary One of the biggest dirty secrets of the DNC Media Complex is that, for some time now, ...
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-paid-propaganda-as-news-scam_2802974.html
The Globalists opened the doors and created a MASSIVE FOREIGN BRIBERY industry that runs out of Washington DC.
And yes, news media outlets play a key role in this foreign bribery industry.
You Can’t Put America First Until Washington’s Foreign Bribery Industry Has Been Shut Down
Commentary Many people are wondering where things go from here, now that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has ...
By the time Obama was well into his 2nd term, the bribery and the corruption was so massive they couldn’t even hide much of it any more and besides, why they should keep trying to keep it out of sight?
Who’d be able to do anything about it, anyway?
Obama would pass the baton to his designated successor, and Her Majesty Hillary would finally have her long awaited coronation, and the Globalist Machine would just keep churning on it’s merry way.
There was no way she could lose, after all.
AND THEN A MIRACLE HAPPENED!!!!!
AND THEN A MIRACLE HAPPENED!!!!
A globalist elite didn’t win the 2016 election.
An outsider did.
One they couldn’t get to, one they couldn’t control.
When he gets reelected, you’re literally going to see some of these globalist elites lose their minds.
They know what it means to their agenda if he gets another 4 years. Not just here in the US, but worldwide.
Because it’s not just the NBA that needs a reformation to remove all that vile CCP influence.
The entire political elite class in DC and in the US news media needs an enema too to wash out all the filthy CCP/Russian/Qatar/Iranian filthy lucre.
And if Trump gets the second term that’s what’s going to happen.
A whole bunch of stuff he’s been holding off on for now.
Like completely restructuring the entire Federal government.
And going after the social media censors.
So the CCP’s insidious worldwide influence is going to be dramatically scaled back after this pandemic.
The CCP’s media shills in the West can’t stop it.
Because they can’t stop Trump.
And you can quote me on that.
/end