Saturday, March 02, 2019

Trump's Splendid Isolation


Last Update: March 10, 2019, at 6:15 am

《精彩的隔离》是19世纪的英国政策,今天这也是美国总统特朗普的
政策。这个政策不需要了联盟,但是全球的情况改变了。新时代的
通讯和交通产生了全球的贸易网络和移民运动,也产生了思想扩散。


"Splendid isolation" is the term used at the time for the 19th-century British diplomatic practice of avoiding permanent alliances, particularly under the governments of Lord Salisbury between 1885 and 1902. The practice emerged as early as 1822 with Britain's exit from the post-1815 Concert of Europe and continued until 1904 when Britain found it useful to establish its "Entente Cordiale" with France. It was the division of Europe into two power blocs and Britain's isolation during the Second Boer War (1899-1902) that forced Britain to finally abandon its policy of isolation.



Lord Salisbury in a caricature (1900)


However, in a speech held on 26 February 1896, the contemporary British politician Viscount Goschen still insisted on the usefulness of "splendid isolation" when he declared "We are said to be isolated, but I say that, which I know when I say that, we have but to hold out our hands and our isolation will terminate, and we shall receive welcome into several groups of other Powers. ..... In the modern system of European politics we could at any moment, I believe, make such alliances as we chose. ..... Our isolation is not an isolation of weakness, or of contempt for ourselves: it is deliberately chosen; the freedom to act as we choose in any circumstances that may arise."

In our times, diplomatic historian Margaret MacMillan argued that in 1897 Britain was indeed isolated, but far from being "splendid" this was a bad thing, for Britain had no real friends and was engaged in disputes with the United States, France, Germany, and Russia.

Sounds familiar to you ?

Taking US president Trump's policy of "America first" with all its consequences as given, we easily find paralleles to Britain's political adage of isolation and noninterference as practised in most of the 19th century.




Only to consider what US vice-president Pence said on the 2019 Munich Security Conference: "America has never been stronger than today", and which indicates a similar point of view like that expressed by Viscount Goschen in 1896 Britain: This time, America is acting out of a position of strength (real or imagined) that enables the country to seek and abandon alliances at will and according to America's changing needs.

Based on such point of view, it might make sense to court North Korea's despotic leader Kim Jong-Un, to dupe instead long-standing partners in Europe or to build a wall on the border to Mexico at enormous costs. Even some military conflict with Iran or Venezuela, based on an individual pretext and in order to control the regional oil markets, might fit into the scheme of a self-righteous policy ignoring, both, the reality of 21th century and the interests of other powerful global players.

While "splendid isolation" was working as a practicable policy during a certain era in the 19th century when functioning networks of trade and communication, including the globally acting financial markets, still did not exist and everything was simply about plundering the colonies for the benefit of the colonial powers' national economies.

In our time where global development and trade is steadily growing and diversifying in the frame of fast means of traffic and highspeed communications, any unilateral restriction like the implementation of national tariffs will necessarily generate conflict and isolate a nation that is following such hazardous proceedings. As a consequence, former partners of the US will have to keep more close together and even improve their relations with powerful competitors like China, such creating an increasing danger to US economy and damage to its political credibility.


《美国之音》3月7日——特朗普任内第二年贸易逆差创新高

On March 6, 2019, US media like CNN, NY Times and Washington Post reported about the most dramatic development of America's national economy under the Trump administration:

In what can be seen as a severe blow to president Trump, America’s Trade Deficit in goods hit a record $891 billion at the end of 2018 — the highest it’s ever been.

The trade deficit is the difference between how much goods and services the US imports from other countries and how much it exports.

Of course, the weakened overseas demand for American goods is partly due to a global economic slowdown and the relative strength of the US dollar. But the widening gap was also essentially caused by Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut, which has been largely financed by government borrowing, and the trade war he escalated last year.

Not only did the trade deficit increase, it increased exactly where Trump said it wouldn’t. Reducing the gap has always been a key subject of Trump's policies.



And, by the way, British proceedings to exit from the EU ("Brexit") have already proved to be a severe nuisance to Britain's economy and credibility, not only a loss for Europe. - Just another example that "splendid isolation" might be a risky enterprise today.

And we still didn't speak about North Korea's "Juche" ideology which is often related to the word "self-reliance" and was invented by Kim Jong-Un's grandfather Kim Il-Sung: It is the ultimate example of "splendid isolation" and, maybe, this could explain why US president Trump was, at least until some days ago, so fond of N Korea's despotic leader. However, there are still chances for a better understanding between both of them, even after the crashed summit in Vietnam, as the German proverbe has it: "The rat pack are beating up each other and are friends again." ("Pack schlägt sich, Pack verträgt sich.")




Trump's 2019 CPAC address in 3 minutes You have to switch on the video sound !
President Trump's address to the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 2
was the longest speech of his presidency. He covered many topics, including the people
involved in Muller's Russia probe, the Green New Deal on climate control and some ugly
aspect of border security. And referring to current "immigration lottery" he added:
"I'm finding loopholes to get around the loophole because our Congress cannot."

[《华盛顿邮报》3月2日:“民主在黑暗中消亡” ,
特朗普演说在共和党的会议。]





Holding America as a Hostage
劫持美国为人质




The incredible evidence of White House information leaks
originating from fed-up Trump aides (... willfully) and from
Trump himself (... by ignoring basic security standards).
[MSNBC on March 8, 2019]




Twitter statistics and remarkable tweets for @blueprint_news (March 1st, 2019).




Top Tweet on the US-North Korea subject,
dating from March 9, and the overall tweet
statistics 15 hours after publishing.




Saturday, February 02, 2019

China and the US Exit from INF Treaty


US secretary of state Pompeo says the U.S. will suspend its obligations to the INF treaty today, Saturday Feb. 2nd 2019. The day before he stated that if Russia doesn’t come into compliance, the treaty “will terminate.”

The INF treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty), signed in 1987, was the first arms control measure to ban an entire class of weapons: Ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 500 kilometers (310 miles) and 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles). Russia denies that it has been in violation.

U.S. officials have expressed concern that China, which isn’t part of the treaty, is deploying large numbers of missiles in Asia that the U.S. can’t counter because it’s bound by the treaty [Boston Herald]. There remains an amassing of US missiles on more or less small islands like Okinawa and which could be easily handled by Chinese rocket forces in case of conflict between China and the US according to Chinese opinion comments on one website which is dealing with military items [SINA Military 新浪军事]. This seems to be the reason why Washington specially declared that China had nothing to do with the INF treaty.




Chinese comments to the subject as found on a related
SINA Military 新浪军事 website published on Feb. 1st.


Russia's answer to the US decision followed within hours:



..............................



Top-tweets on Twitter for @blueprint_news in January 2019.


Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Trump’s Russia Denial - Historic Quote


President Donald Trump’s Historic Russia Denial Will Follow Him Forever. After latest news delivered by The Daily Beast, a popular US source, Trump's famous stance on the absence of personal relations with Russia has, once again, come into the focus of a broader public in the frame of special prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigations in the subject:

=> Mueller probes an event with Nunes, Flynn and foreign officials at Trump's DC Hotel. <=




Saturday, January 12, 2019

China - Communications in Space


The following article is quoting Chinese publications on cutting-edge laser communications in space and which makes up for one of China's most ambitious national programs. Due to the complex character of that subject, I tried to keep myself as close as possible to the original text in order to avoid misinterpretation. Only slight editorial changes have been made to the quotations.

On January 9 in 2015, the first prize of the National Technology Invention Award, and which represents the highest level of invention and creation in China, was awarded to Prof. Ma Jing and his research team at the Harbin Institute of Technology by China's prime minister Li Keqiang.

"Prof. Ma Jing and Prof. Tan Liying successfully carried out the 'Star-Earth Laser-Link-Communications Test' which is an important milestone in the history of China's satellite communications technology development, marking China's space high-speed information transmission, a high-tech aerospace cutting- edge field."



Harbin Institute of Technology - Prof. Ma Jing (l) and Prof. Tan Liying (r)

[中国教育和科研计算机网网络中心——哈工大报2019年01月02日]


More accurate, however, is a Chinese publication in the US magazine Science, and which was launched on June 16, 2017. That publication deals with "Satellite-based entanglement distribution over 1200 kilometers". In other words it's about "Space calling Earth, on the quantum line". All of the authors belong to research facilities located in China.

"Any successful quantum communications network will rely on the ability to distribute entangled photons over large distances between receiver stations. Up to then, earthbound free-space demonstrations had been limited to line-of-sight links across cities or between mountaintops. Scattering and coherence decay have limited the link separations to around 100 km. Yin et al. now used the Chinese Micius satellite, which was launched last year and is equipped with a specialized quantum optical payload. They successfully demonstrated the satellite-based entanglement distribution to (terrestic) receiver stations separated by more than 1200 km. The results obtained are illustrating the possibility of a future global quantum communications network."



The signal attenuation of measured photon activity as a
function of varying length of the communications path.


"Quantum entanglement, first recognized by (Albert) Einstein, Podolsky, and Roson, as well as Schrödinger, is a physical phenomenon in which the quantum states of a many-particle system cannot be factorized into a product of single-particle wave functions, even when the particles are separated by large distances. Entangled states have been produced in laboratories and exploited to test the contradiction between classical local hidden variable theory and quantum mechanics by using Bell’s inequality. It is of fundamental interest to distribute entangled particles over increasingly large distances and study the behavior of entanglement under extreme conditions."



In the space module, photons of different quantum status were generated by a pump laser
(PL) and subsequent polarizing crystal (PBS) that is splitting the laser beam into differently
polarized photons. An integrated system of mirrors is comprising fixed dichromatic mirrors
DM1/DM2 and piezo-electrically steered mirrors PI for fine adjustment. It is used to aligne
both kinds of photons before their emission. Quarter-wave and half-wave plates QWP/HWP
are included.


"Practically, large-scale dissemination of entanglement — eventually at a global scale — is useful as the essential physical resource for quantum information protocols such as quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation, and quantum networks."

[Science - American Association for the Advancement of Science 16 June 2017]




There have been considerations, published by other sources, to use photon-entanglement in the creation of secure communication lines that could not be hacked. Any unauthorized interference with such line would lead to a quantum switch of entangled photons and such trigger off the alarm at the connected receiving station.

Up to now, we don't know for sure whether photon-entanglement is playing a role in China's brandnew communications line named the "Magpie Bridge", and which already enables data transfer between Earth and the backside of the Moon. However, it would be a contradiction to enormous Chinese efforts in this field, if such option was not included in the plannings of the Magpie project.



China's relay satellite system "Magpie Bridge". [搜狐2019年01月02日]



Related Subjects:



Here's another future application of quantum mechanics and quantum state entanglement.
According to IBM Q, 1st US manufacturer of quantum computers, some systems are already
available and are allegedly working under stable conditions, i.e. without any mechanical or
thermal disturbances from the outside. IBM Q's brandnew commercial video was launched
on January 8, 2019:



Friday, December 14, 2018

Trump's America - State of Nation


Trump's America - When the Evil Enters the Stage of Public Life - A philosophic-religious evaluation of the State-of-the-Nation.



Sunday, December 09, 2018

The Huawei Incident - War of Technologies


Update added for the 70th Anniversary
of Human Rights on December 9, 2018.





..............................

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".




Le Monde Diplomatique on December 9, 2018.


Saturday, December 01, 2018

The Moral Gap in Politics


Last Update: 2nd December 2018
This blogspot includes latest news
on the Ukrainian-Russian conflict:




" We are the evil guys ! "





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.

..............................

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.


Sunday, November 25, 2018

Iran Sanctions Corrupted by Russia


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.

据英国《金融时报》报道,美国财政部当天在声明中介绍,这些实体分别为俄罗斯能源部下属的一家 国企“Promsriereimpor”、俄“Global Vision Group”公司与伊朗“Tadbir Kish”公司,其他6名 个人则包括“Promsriereimport”副总经理安德烈·多加耶夫与伊朗央行官员等。

目前,俄方及相关企业尚未就此作出回应。


[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.

声明表示,从2014年起,叙利亚人穆罕默德·阿奇维基(Mohammed Amer ash-Shviki)通过其设 在俄罗斯的公司“Global Vision Group”绕过美国制裁将伊朗石油先运往俄罗斯、再运往叙利亚,伊朗 中央银行、伊朗国家石油公司、俄国企“Promsriereimpor”均参与其中。作为回报,叙利亚政府将资 金支付给伊朗伊斯兰革命卫队、黎巴嫩真主党及哈马斯等组织。

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.

..............................




Iran leaving the US$ payment system. It's now the Euro or
the "hot potato" Renminbi (China Yuan), the "Trump Card".


[ZYNEWS 中原网 on November 25, 2018]


Tuesday, November 06, 2018

US Midterms Proxy War


Last Update loaded on late November 9.



Election Results at 06:00 CET on November 7, 2018

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.

美国中期的选举达到结果。民主党获得众议员的多数 但是失去些位参议员,民主党最新当选的众议员都有 才能的,也包括很多女人。在选举的后来民主党在 众议院可能阻击特朗普总统的新法规,也可检查 特朗普的报税。

Some article from the Australian Financial Magazine (Nov. 9 edition) you should have read:
There is no GOP now, just Trump, so buckle in for a wild ride

9日11月澳大利亚金融杂志写了美国总统控制起来共和党,如果新众议院把特朗普逼入困境,他一个人可能成为更多极端的。从中期选举到2020的总统选举特朗普的治理可能相似狂怒的骑马。




"A Disturbance in the Force of the Dark Side"




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.



Wednesday, October 31, 2018

The American Dream Machine Is Broken


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.

..........

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.

- Ulysses 2018 -

..............................


A real simple guide to the US mid-term elections by BBC News

美国2018年中期选举选什么? 选举重点提前看 [人民网11月5日]




[Global News, Canada, on November 4, 2018]



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].



Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Top Tweets Targeting Trump


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)




Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Finished


Last Update: October 24





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.



10 Mega Projects in China by 2018.


Monday, October 15, 2018

China Blaming US Over-Estimation


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.


…………

“重建”通常和战争之后的经济快速复兴联系在一起。如果说美国内战后的重建靠的是美国人 自己,第二次世界大战后欧洲和日本的经济重建离不开美国的帮助,大体还是符合历史事实 的。近十多年里,美国在南亚、中东和北非先后发动和参与了几场战争,但至今也没能帮助 被战火和动荡蹂躏过的阿富汗、伊拉克和利比亚完成战后重建,甚至已经公开放弃重建的 目标。美国尚没能力“重建”只有几千万人口的国家,何况十几亿人口的中国,“重建中国” 说可谓大言不惭、自作多情。


"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:



“重建中国”?美国迷之自信

"Rebuilding China" ? America's exaggerated self-confidence.





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 !

..............................



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.