Chinese aggression

At the very start of his podcast, Scott Adams points out that the name of the Chinese company and the CEO behind the Fentanyl/opioid epidemic is known, and that maybe someone should do something about it. For him it is personal, since his stepson recently died of an overdose.

The article he is mentioning is found here. and HERE, where the SCMP notes that the criminal gangs change the chemical structure to get around the narcotic laws in China.

Not in the article: All you have to do to get around the law in China is bribe the local officials, of course, and note that the article mentions that it wasn't until Trumpieboy pressured Xi that fentanyl trade was made illegal.

the SCMP is from Hong Kong so doesn't follow the party line all the time (remember, one reason for the Hong Kong protests was an extradition law that would allow "dissidents" to be sent to China for all sorts of stuff). However, Wikipedia reports AliBaba owns the newspaper, and that is a Chinese company.

AliBaba is the Chinese equivalent of Ebay/Amazon, that lets people in villages access to all sorts of stuff on line that in the past was not available to them.

But Jack Ma, the founder, is a member of the communist party, and according to Wikipedia the SCMP is being influenced by the party line (i.e. refusing to frame stories via the western memes but more sympathetic to the Chinese point of view).

StrategyPage has a long essay about China's illegal takeover of the West Philippine sea. Like Hitler's slow take over of nearby countries in the late 1930s, everyone knows it is illegal but no one wants to go to war to stop them.

One of the dirty little secrets about the drug war in the Philippines is that the Chinese cartels are behind much of it.

and the bad news is that the smuggling into the country here is getting worse. Or maybe not: What seems to be happening is that more illicit drugs are being found.

as for the 'drug war' so hated by the "human rights" types: things are indeed safer now. And remember, a lot of the deaths the "human rights" types count and blame on Duterte are vigilante or personal pay back hits because people don't trust the justice system.

and it doesn't make the "Human rights" types more believable when they wine and dine De Lima for criticizing Duterte's war on drugs, when everyone here knows about the Bilibad prison scandal,
may get back in the news because the cops have arrested her bag man this week.

a couple years ago, local wags spread around a faked pornographic video of her and her driver that made everyone here laugh at her, since she is one of the few Filipinas who is actually ugly.

as for Duterte's war on drugs: The human rights folks haven't noticed that crime is down and that the murder rate isn't up much worse than before it started.

And for ordinary folks, things are now safer.

But ordinary folks safety doesn't count to "human rights" types who often live in gated communities and recruit among the affluent college students.

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related items: lots of complications about the "trade war" of the US with China.





and an article on the Chinese food crisis.

they have a major problem because they have to cull millions of pigs with African Swine Flu...

(we don't have it here yet, but it is only a matter of time until it gets here, via smuggled pork). Indeed, the Ag folks are worried it is already here since there are reports of pigs dying.

and this podcast is about the demonstrations in Hong Kong.