Update added for the 70th Anniversary
of Human Rights on December 9, 2018.
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70th Anniversary of Human Rights
Arabic Media Reporting.
The following Arabic article I found on the website of برنامج إضاءات
Program Spotlights and which is related to قناة العربية Al-Arabiya
TV in Dubai:
مواقف الشعوب هي التحدي الأكبر لمستقبل حقوق الإنسان
"The positions of peoples are the greatest challenge to the future of human rights".
Reading this article one gets an idea of how much the individual situation of a certain human
population (starving poverty or life in abundance) determines its approach to human rights. In
the end it always leads to old grandpa Karl Marx and his stance
"Being determines consciousness".
US president Trump is ignoring CIA assessment that Saudi crown prince Bin Salman
ordered the Kashoggi killing inside the Saudi consulate general in Istanbul / Turkey.
Timeline of Novichok attack on former Russian spy Skripal at his Salisbury home (GB).
Public assessment made by official from British counter-terrorism.
Still to remember: The Litvinenko killing using radioactive Polonium.
And here we are back in the USA .....
US president Trump, Michael Cohen and the "Russia Connection"
On Thursday November 29, 2018, the US based Lawfare Blog published an evaluation of the fact that Michael
Cohen, the former lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump, had admitted in court his participation in a deal
between the Trump Organization and Russian authorities which up to then remained unknown. [The quoted blog is published by Lawfare Institute and which is connected with the Brookings Institute think tank in Washington DC.]
In effect, Cohen admitted in court on Thursday that even as Russian operatives were hacking Democratic emails
and getting ready to dump emails through Wikileaks, even as Trump was publicly praising Russian strongman
Vladimir Putin, even as the Trump Tower meeting involving Donald Trump Jr. took place in the summer of 2016,
the Trump Organization—with Trump and his family very much in the know—was negotiating to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The Trump Organization was negotiating—or, at least, trying to negotiate—this deal with the Kremlin itself. And Cohen has admitted that he lied to Congress about this history to protect Trump politically.
..........
The primary point is that this is all utterly unacceptable. That a large swath of the public, and the legislative
branch, has chosen to accept it does not make it more reasonable that a man seeking to be president of the United
States would at the same time publicly cozy up to a foreign dictator and negotiate with his regime over a potential
business opportunity—and then cover it all up. The story is likely to get worse. As this article was about to go
to publication, Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold broke in BuzzFeed News that the Trump Organization planned to gift Vladimir Putin a penthouse suite at Trump Tower Moscow.
By the way, Israel isn't much better off .....
Headlines of Israel's daily Haaretz on 2nd December 2018.
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Latest News from Ukraine:
Al-Jazeera on November 29, 2018, quoting an interview
granted by Ukraine's president to a German newspaper.
As Ukraine's presidential elections are near, allegations are spreading that president Poroshenko is looking to boost his approval rating by using the long-standing Crimea conflict with Russia as a pretext. According to the Russian news center Sputnik, Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia's foreign ministry, stated at a briefing on November 30:
"The intention of the Kiev regime, its representatives and, of course, President Petro Poroshenko is clear. Its primary target is using a martial law for boosting approval rating, which is rapidly falling, in order to earn points riding another wave of Russiphobia".
Russia's S-400 air defence system deployed in the Russian controlled zone
of disputed Crimea in the frame of an overall military build-up by Russia.
First news about S-400 deployment from SINA on November 29, 2018.
On Saturday December 1st, 2018, Ukraine's president Poroshenko came about with figures of a Russian military build-up and which are being considered as realistic by Igor Koziy, a military expert at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation. The following information was published by Al-Jazeera the same day:
More than 80,000 Russian soldiers are present at Ukraine's borders and the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, as well as the rebel-held regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, according to the Ukrainian president.
..........
As he rallies for international support against Moscow, Poroshenko said Russia had about 1,400 artillery and rocket systems, 900 tanks, 2,300 armoured combat vehicles, more than 500 military planes and 300 helicopters in and around Ukraine.
Russia has more than 80 Russian military ships and eight submarines in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov and the Aegean Sea, according to Poroshenko.
The following news about Russian companies corrupting US sanctions on Iranian oil exports originate from the US Treasury Department and were launched by China's news network SINA 新浪网 on November 21, 2018.
[The Chinese language article] is quoting Britain's "Financial Times" and which is referring to a declaration made by the US Treasury Department on November 20. The information names Iranian and Russian companies and persons involved, including the
Iranian "Tadbir Kish" company and the deputy CEO of Russia's "Promsriereimport".
The Russian side did not react on the subject up to now.
Since 2014 Syrian citizen Mohammed Amer ash-Shviki sent US sanctioned Iranian oil via Russia's "Global Vision Group" first to Russia and later to Syria, all with the participation of Iran's Central Bank, the Iranian National Oil Company and Russia's "Promsriereimpor".
Payments from Syria's government are transferred to organizations like Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Lebanon's Hezbollah and [the Palestinian] Hamas.
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Iran leaving the US$ payment system. It's now the Euro or
the "hot potato" Renminbi (China Yuan), the "Trump Card".
Democrats won over the House with a remarkable majority but lost further seats
in the Senate to the Republicans instead of winning.
Such results underline how deeply divided the United States are at present.
As expected, Donald Trump declared a "tremendous success", supposedly referring
to the effect of his personal support for Republican candidates during the
competition.
An astonishing aspect of the 2018 midterms is the fact that so many educated
women prevailed in the elections.
Furthermore the midterms brought about many fresh personalities who challenged
the Republican establishment, only to mention the Democrat Beto O'Rourke who
closely lost against the Republican Senator Ted Cruz. O'Rourke, the Democratic
newcomer in Republican Texas, made a really good job against his well-known
opponent.
Even though the Senate has fallen to the Republicans, the signals are set for
a change because the Democratic majority in the House enables control of new
law projects and government financing and, what is more important, the ability
to start public investigations into supposed misbehaviour of Trump, his financial
background which is up to now unclear, or Trump's immigration politics.
The above quoted top tweet of mine has remarks from Donald Trump and ex-President Obama.
While Trump acknowledged that the House of Representatives might go to the Democrats,
Obama expressed his wish that all voters (whatever their political inclination might be)
should take to the poll stations.
This most recent tweet, published in the Chinese language on November 5, reached more than
500 separate views within 24 hours and triggered about 3.5 % of media interaction. Statistics
being still on the rise, the number of views even reached about 730 (4% interaction) in the
evening of November 7. And there is evidence of further increase.
Of course I cannot claim that my readers came from the abundant Chinese community in the US
and whose ancestors once participated in the construction of the first coast-to-coast railway
line in 19th century. They could come from anywhere. However, such visitor statistics for a
rather tiny tweet are proving the tremendous public interest that is being generated by the
US midterm elections of 2018. - And in fact there is so much at stake .....
A maximum of 1550 US visits was finally reached on November 10 and
which is adding to some 170 visitors whose origin remained unidentified.
An update on US Midterm Elections
was added on November 4/5, 2018.
Nameless painting by Weronika Gęsicka from her series "Traces" (2017), adopted by
the French paper "Le Monde Diplomatique" for their article published in August 2018
Why Donald Trump seduced the popular electorate
The Anatomy of Rightist Anger
In a very poor American state like Louisiana, stained by oil spills, a majority of the population votes for Republican candidates hostile to social benefits and environmental protection.
Sociologist, leftist woman, Arlie Hochschild investigated this paradox. A few months later, Donald Trump won the day in Louisiana.
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The dream machine is out of order.
Among the images of black people rooted in the spirit of the people I met, one was missing: that of a woman or a man who, like them [i.e the underprivileged white people], was just waiting for their efforts. The deep story told by whites, Christians, the elderly or the reactionaries of Louisiana nonetheless responded to a real trauma. On the one hand, the national ideal of the American dream, that is to say of progress. On the other, a growing difficulty to progress.
For the "lower" population, nine out of ten Americans, the dream machine installed on the invisible side of the hill no longer works, decommissioned by automation, offshoring and the exorbitant power of multinationals over their workforce . Within this very large group, competition between whites and non-whites has become increasingly fierce - whether for employment, for a place in society or for allowances.
The failure of the dream machine dates back to 1950. People born before that date saw their incomes grow as they grew older. For those born later, it is the opposite.
The article reprinted by "Le Monde Diplomatique" in August 2018 was originally written by Arlie Hochschild, sociologist at the University of California in Berkely.
The quoted article compares different pictures of the American society taken at different
moments in modern history, each of them describing the prevailing way
of social identification within a certain group of the American workforce.
Such pictures reflect a continuous loss of speed in the economic and social progress for an
essential part of the white population until that progress finally stopped to give way to a
continuous deterioration of life conditions. Simultaneously, all hope for a decent life has
melted away from one generation to the next.
In other words, the American Dream Machine has come to a grinding halt for the underprivileged
members of America's working class who lack a higher education and, as a result, lost any chance
to improve their situation, those who now see themselves being overtaken by all kinds of "free
riders", i.e. coloured shooting stars like Obama and his clan, Latino immigrants or the gay who
are now competing with the traditional model of a heterosexual family.
Now, this underprivileged group has found their Messiah in a rough and uneducated man who seems
to be one of them as he addresses their problems in a rude manner that each of his followers
would have liked to copy but never dared.
This man, named Donald Trump, is attracting his followers even more by his posture as an extremely
successful businessman who never lost his common sense, such presenting himself as an ideal leader
of the chanceless and underprivileged "true" Americans and, therefore, as a personified symbol for
the American Dream.
This, however, is a fake. In fact, Donald Trump was born with a golden spoon in his mouth and
which made him immune against the challenges of earning his living with some hard work while
competing with others who might be more talented.
All he needs to ensure his well-being is to care that his father's money is not too fast melted
away by whatever foolish enterprise he might have in mind. Unable to compete with more successful members of the "millionaire
class" because of his lack of education and/or experience in the real struggle for economic survival,
he remains a loser within his own class of the American society, - a man you are now being asked to support in the midterm elections where so much is at stake for your country.
In their article published on October 22, 2018, "USA Today" came to the estimation that poorest federal states have Republican legislatures and richest have Democratic ones and which is to be seen as the result of a historic development. Such development already began decades ago when just the contrary was true.
Seen in the frame of the above quoted evaluation by a Berkeley sociologist, it seems that political orientation never changed while degradation of life was taking place for the white majority, and the idea of the American Dream turned from a realistic personal challenge into a far distant "sugar candy mountain".
In addition, a changing demography brought about the increasing influence of national minorities who are now claiming their right to vote, thus endangering the local political establishment with their tendency to vote for a Democratic legislature.
That seems to be why local Republican authorities are trying to do their best to purge colored citizens from election rolls, a fact that surfaced, once again, in the 2018 midterms and is being reported by international media [i.e. Al-Jazeera on November 5].
Here are some top tweets of mine dealing with US president Donald Trump. An update for latest Twitter Analytics Data was included on November 4, proving that most visitor impressions shown below are still on the rise !
Donald Trump - Taking Over the Union - What's the difference between
the killer and the person who poisoned his brain ? You tell me !
Latest tweet published about 20 hours ago. It is based on Chinese media
news and referring to what Donald Trump told a reporter the day before.
Top Tweet Analytics for August 2018 when allegations about personal misbehaviour
and evidence of criminal activity within Trump's inner circle made it into the news:
(Visitor impressions by November 3)
Top Tweet Analytics for July 2018 related to earlier tweets about Donald Trump:
(Visitor impressions by November 4)
Pictures are provided by the administrative office
for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge project.
Hong Kong citizens celebrating the opening of the new connection with Macao and Zhuhai.
Traffic being restricted on this sea bridge, most Chinese have to use regular bus services.
In the frame of Sino-US relations rapidly getting worse, here comes another
bad joke from Washington DC.
Only recently, in a speech held at the Hudson Institute, US vice-president
Mike Pence told the world that " America is rebuilding China ".
Anybody gifted with some common sense and who has a basic knowledge about China's
history could imagine such US ambitions as being far from
realistic. Even though some bad habits of early capitalism already swapped
into China since the times of Deng Xiao Ping and which could be classified
as America's "cultural contribution" to China's development, the Chinese
people are generally reputed for their affinity to hard work and their
efficiency while doing business, as long as they are not hampered by any
state doctrine or law. The idea of America rebuilding China therefore
remains mere wishful thinking.
I recently met with some Chinese saying of unknown origin and which goes :
" The Chinese make it with their engineers, the Americans with their lawyers. "
张文宗：“美国重建中国”？美国人自己都不信
Zhang WenZong: " America rebuilding China " ?
The Americans themselves don't believe it.
Zhang WenZong is a director of the Department of US Political
Affairs at the China Institute of Modern International Relations.
"Rebuilding" is often associated with a fast revival of economy after a war.
While reconstruction after America's Civil War relied on the Americans
themselves, the economic reconstruction of Europe and Japan after World War
II could not be separated from the help of the United States,
and which is generally consistent with historical facts.
During the past ten years (and even longer), the United States have launched
and participated in several wars, following each other in South Asia, the
Middle East and North Africa. However, [the US] have not been able up to
now to help Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, when ridden by the flames
of war and unrest, to complete post-war reconstruction. [The US] even more
officially abandoned their goal of reconstruction.
The United States are [therefore obviously] unable to "rebuild" a country of only
some ten million inhabitants, let alone China with its around one billion
inhabitants.
To speak of "rebuilding China" [therefore] means making big words without
shame out of an over-estimation of oneself.
[SINA economy 新浪财经
on October 15, 2018]
A similar article on that subject was printed today by
People's Daily 人民日报:
A brandnew painting in the White House fitting to the subject:
The Republican Club by Andy Thomas
showing Donald Trump in a meeting with former US presidents.
Some Arabic guy posted another version on Twitter and which could be named:
魔鬼的约会 Meeting of the Demons اللقاء من الأباليس
A masterpiece of post-modern realism !
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Chicago visitor to "blueprint news" reminding of Donald Trump's pecularity of calling names.
Separate visitor statistics are available for another and much
older website of mine where an entry into "blueprint news" was
created on the main page from the very beginning of that news
blog.
Such statistics are far more professional than those offered
for free by the blog provider of "blueprint news". As visitors
to that older site can be expected to enter the latest posts on
"blueprint news" rather than any old stuff already published years
ago, the statistics for that access page might serve as an
additional indicator who is really visiting "blueprint news".
Between October 1st and October 17, 2018, such additional statistics
still recorded some thousand hits, many coming from Russian servers
like *.ru and *.su (for the former Soviet Union and still existing !)
and from the USA as well (28 hits alone from Washington servers
including one from Capitol Heights).
Visitors from China came about with several hundred page hits in
the same period of time. Chinese server access was detected from
15 destinations like Beijing, Chaoyang, Guizhou, Harbin, Shanghai,
and Wuhan, delivering a total of 546 page hits.
New national laws on the protection of private data and an increasing
trend among internet users to anonymize their appearance on the web
make it steadily harder to detect the origin of visitors. As such
detection is only intended to present the variety of visitors to
"blueprint news" without getting too personal and without financial
interest, anonymization can lead to the simple result that I lose
interest in the translation of high-quality news and comments from
Chinese and Arabic sources, and this would mean a loss of diversity
on the web.
In February 2018 a brandnew Chinese language blockbuster was released by film director Dante Lam. The plot of "Operation Red Sea" is essentially based on a military coup staged in some fictive North-African country and which leads to the need to evacuate Chinese citizens together with some other foreigners who are now endangered by militant Islamic terrorists decided to drive the world into chaos with a dirty bomb. The radioactive product needed for the bomb should be provided by the responsible person of some globally connected mining company and who has fallen into the hands of the terrorists.
The plot is related to a famous rescue operation carried out by China's navy in Yemen when a bloody conflict escalated between Yemen's national government and Houthy rebels in March 2015. Here now some remarks on the making of China's latest blockbuster:
Some key scenes were taken at Ait Ben Haddou, Morocco. As I happened to visit that location only some months before, I am able to provide pictures of the original place, an ancient fortified Kasbah that was erected at a place where the Atlas mountains open into the desert. While the Kasbah and the mountain fortress are original, the gate to be seen in the movie is a fake. It was built to serve as the background for another blockbuster movie.
电影在摩洛哥山地的旧村拍摄了，拍摄工作难堪在热度很高的天气。
Temperatures in 2017 were unusually high in that area, i.e. surpassing 40°C in September, and should have been still around 30°C in autumn. When I crossed the dried up valley and climbed to the upper terrace of the Kasbah, it came to my mind that acting in a film right in font of this site must be a murderous job.
Even more, acting in full combat gear would add to the hardships, let alone the need to undergo some basic weapons training before the compulsory combat stunts while acting under the merciless desert sun. No wonder that one of the female stars was wounded twice during some especially rough scenes. The Chinese involved must therefore be a tough species.
For the necessary infrastructure of filming there are studios at Ouarzazate, only some miles away.
Special Effects applied in Operation Red Sea.
电影特技在红海行动
The final sequence of Operation Red Sea might nourish some second thoughts about Chinese imperialism regarding the South China Sea problem. In fact, it's nothing more than what we got used from similar US productions in the blood and honor style. A call of patriotism wrapped into a gripping plot and enhanced with many special effects. Still worth to be watched even if you don't agree with the Chinese, however, up to now only available in the original Chinese version with English subtitles.
Historic rescue operation realized by China's navy in 2015.
Operation Red Sea is being presented to Chinese audiences as a gift for the 90th anniversary of the People's Liberation Army PLA and is dedicated to the 19th National Congress of China's Communist Party. This film is regarded as China's first modern naval film. The film has already become a 579 million US$ success. It was selected as the Hong Kong entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards.
US source reporting: China's hypersonic missile test and
a rare insight into China's South China Sea activities.
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Breaking News on China's Cyber Warfare:
On October 5, 2018, the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC came about with the following news:
Tensions between the United States and China have been rising, but the worst may be ahead.
The disclosure by Bloomberg Businessweek that the Chinese military allegedly implanted microchips onto thousands of motherboards used by the US government and major businesses is the most damning evidence to date of a massive Chinese espionage campaign. Shortly after the revelations were published, Vice President Mike Pence stated, “China is meddling in America’s democracy.”
This, on the heels of new tariffs and an “unsafe” military confrontation in the South China Sea.
For years, the US intelligence and national-security communities have warned that the Chinese Communist Party might interfere with electronics manufactured in China. Last year, the Defense Science Board went so far as to state that China’s offensive cyber capabilities “exceed the United States’ ability to defend key critical infrastructures.”
But Thursday’s revelations provide the first public evidence of extensive interference in both civilian and military supply chains.
The Chinese military allegedly inserted tiny microchips onto motherboards manufactured in China for Super Micro Computer Inc., based in San Jose, Calif. These chips were designed to evade detection and to create a backdoor for entry into sensitive systems. According to reports, thousands of motherboards were sent to 30 separate companies and the US government, where they were used by organizations ranging from Apple and Amazon to the Defense Department.
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The Risks of " Buying Cheap ".
US scholar: China became a veritable rival to America
and already surpassed the US in terms of GDP in 2014.
