Yesterday, August 27, 2021, Thursday, I was on Leavenworth St., in downtown San Francisco’s Nob Hill Street, and here’s what I found in the awfully bad streets of many San Francisco neighborhoods.
Homeless street People have taken over our streets in many neighborhoods. Small storefronts are shuttered and San Franciscans are numbed and blocked their minds out of this mess.
The mayor is a Black woman -her name- London Breed, a protege of Willy Brown, wheeler-dealer influence-peddler of the super-rich whose clients include high-powered tech billionaires, real estate developers…. and the Democratic Party machine.
Like Chicago, another old City strangulated by City Hall corruption, San Francisco governance is Tamany Hall grease, graft, corruption, “pay to play.”
We have an election coming up in 2-weeks time. Many California and San Francisco voters are fuming mad. They are in an ugly, nasty mood “to throw the rascals out”!
Other voters are just apathetic and would no longer give a damn. Others have just moved away and abandoned California to wildfires, a drug addiction pandemic, traffic hell, rudeness, vulgarity, hyper-hedonism, hyper-narcissism,
They would rather work out in the gyms, do yoga, jpg or take care of their dogs than care less about fellow city slickers. Like New Yorkers, the other bookend mega city in the East Coast, San Francisco has gone down the toilet… literally and metaphorically.
On the news….. we are being overloaded by sports mania, wars, Covid, hurricanes, flooding, tits and pussies, Britney Spears, and garbage Hollywood news!
Governor Gavin “Hollywood Good Looks” Newsom, a Democrat, godson of the Gettys, is worried that he may be thrown out as Governor in two weeks’ time. The recall election may tilt in favor of “anybody but _______”.
The Republicans, once thought to be dinosaurs, are resurrecting themselves from the graveyard.
When Kamala Harris, Biden’s VP-a native daughter of San Francisco-Oakland and former San Francisco District Attorney and California State Attorney-General opted out and skip California on her way back from Asia, you know the ominous signs do not look good.
Newsom grabs a broom and talks homeless policy at an S.F. Homeless encampment . Why now, 2 weeks before a Recall election?
Video: This is incredible all over the world. Today, children wanted to make quick money. They don’t want to be engineers, doctors, technicians, teachers, etc., they want to make money in stocks, banking and financial services. China can’t follow the path of the United States to let 95% of the people serve 5% of the upper-class elites to create inequality between the rich and the poor. 这在全世界都是不可思议的. 今天孩子們都要賺快錢,不做工程師,醫生, 技術人員,老師等等, 要做金融賺快錢, 那問題就來了. 中國不能走美國的路讓95%的人服務5%的上流精英產生貧富不公現象. https://vimeo.com/593580684 https://youtu.be/tDeQTIon0E8 https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/555694562320540/?d=n
Western media had a field day when the delta variant of COVID-19 started to spread around China last month, with many suggesting this could be the end of China’s “zero-tolerance” strategy, and some even going as far as to suggest the Chinese government would fall.
Five weeks later, and China posted zero new locally transmitted cases. It appears “Communist China” has again succeeded where so many others have failed, forcing Western media to back peddle and admit the government in the world’s most populous nation is on top of its game, and able to quickly mobilize and defeat any threat.
In this episode of Reports on China, I talk about the Western media flip-flops on China and delta, and wonders if there could be a silver lining to the unfair treatment China gets from the media overseas.
Professor John Walsh in San Francisco: This is the great untold story of 2019-2021 in the West. With minimal disruption after a tight 76 dat lockdown in Wuhan (and far less intense measures elsewhere) there have been very few deaths. After Wuhan the toll stood at less than 4700 deaths and it remains at that level today – a number confirmed by counts of excess deaths as published in a peer-reviewed study in the British Medical Journal. See my article: https://dissidentvoice.org/2021/08/learn-from-the-east-a-major-lesson-of-the-pandemic/ (It also appeared in CounterPunch.org and elsewhere.)
This is the result of the outstanding public health measures adopted by China. The deaths in the US and EU are the result of the governments of the West refusing to learn from China and instead belittling it. How do you think the American people would feel that all the deaths and sickness of the last 2 years are the result of the governments of the West refusing to adopt the public health measures of China’s. I would say it is enough to provoke something very like a revolution. That is one reason why the West is determined that China’s success story not be fully told and things like the Wuhan Lab Leak Conspiracy Theory are trotted out to distract us from that central truth.
What are China’s billion netizens doing on the internet by Yang Ruoyu and Xu Zihe Aug 27 2021
The number of internet users in China surpassed 1 BILLION in June 2021. Editor: Yang Ruoyu/GT Graphic: Xu Zihe/GT
China has set up 961,000 5G base stations as of June 2021. 5G networks have covered more than 95% of county-level regions. Editor: Yang Ruoyu/GT Graphic: Xu Zihe/GT
China’s huge market: 469 million users in China have ordered food delivery services online as of June 2021, an increase of 49.76 million from December 2020. Editor: Yang Ruoyu/GT Graphic: Xu Zihe/GT
$46 million fine on actress Zheng Shuang’s tax fraud in line with common prosperity goal as China tightens regulation on tainted celebrities by Zhang Hui Aug 27 2021
China ordered actress Zheng Shuang to pay 299 million yuan（$46 million） in fines, taxes and penalties for tax evasion on Friday, a move aimed at tightening tax supervision of high-income celebrities and ensuring tax fairness for society, Chinese observers said, noting the tax supervision will be further tightened as China ushers in common prosperity, a national goal.
The action was interpreted as part of actions to enhance regulation of the high-earning entertainment industry and several entertainers who have violated the law or have moral taints were not allowed spotlight and got their works removed from online platforms.
Among them were Chinese billionaire actress Zhao Wei, Chinese-Canadian pop idol Kris Wu, who was detained by Beijing police for suspected rape, and actor Zhang Zhehan, who came under fire for visiting Japan’s notorious Yasukuni Shrine, and TV host Qian Feng who was accused of rape with the case still in investigations.
Zheng, whose reputation collapsed after she was accused of abandoning her two surrogate babies in the US earlier this year, was ordered by the Shanghai Municipal Tax Service to pay fines for tax evasion of nearly 220 million yuan, and taxes of 72 million yuan.
The National Radio and Television Administration stated that the TV drama “A Chinese Ghost Story,” which Zheng starred in, was banned from airing and all broadcasters and video service platforms are prohibited from inviting Zheng to shows. The current shows which Zheng participated in were asked to stop broadcasting.
TV dramas Zheng acted in have been removed from major video platforms.
The administration said it holds a zero-tolerance policy on tax evasion and high price payments in the film industry which violate laws and disturbed the industry’s order.
According to the Shanghai tax authority, Zheng received 160 million yuan to star in the TV drama “A Chinese Ghost Story” through tax evasion, signing fake contracts and submitting counterfeit documents to the tax authority.
The State Taxation Administration said in a statement on Friday that tax departments in recent years continued to tighten tax supervision to high-income groups and high-risk industries, including the film industry. The tax authority will closely cooperate with departments in film and broadcasting to strictly crack down on malicious tax evasion.
Beijing Culture, producer of Zheng’s work, was warned and fined 600,000 yuan on Friday by the Beijing securities regulator for false transfer of its investment shares in TV dramas.
Famous actress Zhao Wei’s name was removed from many of the works she starred in on major Chinese video platforms.
Musician and show host Gao Xiaosong’s work, Xiaosong Pedia, was removed from iQiyi on Friday, and the reason was yet to be announced. Gao had served in prison for six months due to drunk driving in 2011.
Ye Qing, a professor at Wuhan-based Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, told the Global Times on Friday that punishment to Zheng served as a deterrent to people in the entertainment industry as well as other high-risk fields such as the public sector.
In 2018, Chinese actress Fan Bingbing was fined 883 million yuan for tax evasion and other offenses. Such supervision will be further tightened with harsher punishments as China marches toward common prosperity, the expert said.
The 10th meeting of the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs last week stressed efforts to promote common prosperity in the pursuit of high-quality development and coordinate work to forestall major financial risks.
Ye said that second income distribution was the key to common prosperity. It’s significant to ensure tax fairness and justice for public and timely punish those evading tax for illegal gains.
Not just celebrities, government officials and civil servants are also one of the high-risk sectors that may involve large amounts of tax evasion or illegal gains through bribes, and supervision of these sectors needs also be tightened.
Economic problems are just one area that celebrities will be put under scrutiny. Since words and deeds of public figures not only reflect their own values, but also subtly influence others’ thoughts and behaviors, especially their young fans, celebrities’ improper or lawbreaking deeds even have a negative effect on social atmosphere, observers said.
Ye said it’s urgent for film academies to include law and history education to their students, not just acting skills.
The Great Game of Smashing Countries BY JOHN PILGER
Women at university in Afghanistan in the 1970s during the time of the PDPA government.
As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” destroyed.
In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shar. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.
Foreign journalists in Kabul, reported the New York Times, were surprised to find that “nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the coup”. The Wall Street Journal reported that “150,000 persons … marched to honour the new flag …the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.”
The Washington Post reported that “Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned”. Secular, modernist and, to a considerable degree, socialist, the government declared a programme of visionary reforms that included equal rights for women and minorities. Political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.
Under the monarchy, life expectancy was thirty-five; one in three children died in infancy. Ninety per cent of the population was illiterate. The new government introduced free medical care. A mass literacy campaign was launched.
For women, the gains had no precedent; by the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up 40 per cent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 per cent of its teachers and 30 per cent of its civil servants.
So radical were the changes that they remain vivid in the memories of those who benefited. Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who fled Afghanistan in 2001, recalled: Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked … We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian films on a Friday … it all started to go wrong when the mujahedin started winning … these were the people the West supported.
For the United States, the problem with the PDPA government was that it was supported by the Soviet Union. Yet it was never the “puppet” derided in the West, neither was the coup against the monarchy “Soviet backed”, as the American and British press claimed at the time.
President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, later wrote in his memoirs: “We had no evidence of any Soviet complicity in the coup.”
In the same administration was Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser, a Polish émigré and fanatical anti-communist and moral extremist whose enduring influence on American presidents expired only with his death in 2017.
On 3 July 1979, unknown to the American people and Congress, Carter authorised a $500 million “covert action” programme to overthrow Afghanistan’s first secular, progressive government. This was code-named by the CIA Operation Cyclone.
The $500 million bought, bribed and armed a group of tribal and religious zealots known as the mujahedin. In his semi-official history, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote that the CIA spent $70 million on bribes alone. He describes a meeting between a CIA agent known as “Gary” and a warlord called Amniat-Melli:
Gary placed a bundle of cash on the table: $500,000 in one-foot stacks of $100 bills. He believed it would be more impressive than the usual $200,000, the best way to say we’re here, we’re serious, here’s money, we know you need it … Gary would soon ask CIA headquarters for and receive $10 million in cash.
Recruited from all over the Muslim world, America’s secret army was trained in camps in Pakistan run by Pakistani intelligence, the CIA and Britain’s MI6. Others were recruited at an Islamic College in Brooklyn, New York – within sight of the doomed Twin Towers. One of the recruits was a Saudi engineer called Osama bin Laden.
The aim was to spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and destabilise and eventually destroy the Soviet Union.
In August, 1979, the US Embassy in Kabul reported that “the United States’ larger interests … would be served by the demise of the PDPA government, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.”
Read again the words above I have italicised. It is not often that such cynical intent is spelt out as clearly. The US was saying that a genuinely progressive Afghan government and the rights of Afghan women could go to hell.
Six months later, the Soviets made their fatal move into Afghanistan in response to the American-created jihadist threat on their doorstep. Armed with CIA-supplied Stinger missiles and celebrated as “freedom fighters” by Margaret Thatcher, the mujahedineventually drove the Red Army out of Afghanistan.
Calling themselves the Northern Alliance, the mujahedin were dominated by war lords who controlled the heroin trade and terrorised rural women. The Taliban were an ultra-puritanical faction, whose mullahs wore black and punished banditry, rape and murder but banished women from public life.
In the 1980s, I made contact with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, known as RAWA, which had tried to alert the world to the suffering of Afghan women. During the Taliban time they concealed cameras beneath their burqas to film evidence of atrocities, and did the same to expose the brutality of the Western-backed mujahedin. “Marina” of RAWA told me, “We took the videotape to all the main media groups, but they didn’t want to know ….”
In 1996, the enlightened PDPA government was overrun. The Prime Minister, Mohammad Najibullah, had gone to the United Nations to appeal to for help. On his return, he was hanged from a street light.
“I confess that [countries] are pieces on a chessboard,” said Lord Curzon in 1898, “upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world.”
The Viceroy of India was referring in particular to Afghanistan. A century later, Prime Minister Tony Blair used slightly different words.
“This is a moment to seize,” he said following 9/11. “The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.”
On Afghanistan, he added this: “We will not walk away [but ensure] some way out of the poverty that is your miserable existence.”
Blair echoed his mentor, President George W. Bush, who spoke to the victims of his bombs from the Oval Office: “The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering … “
Almost every word was false. Their declarations of concern were cruel illusions for an imperial savagery “we” in the West rarely recognise as such.
In 2001, Afghanistan was stricken and depended on emergency relief convoys from Pakistan. As the journalist Jonathan Steele reported, the invasion indirectly caused the deaths of some 20,000 people as supplies to drought victims stopped and people fled their homes.
Eighteen months later, I found unexploded American cluster bombs in the rubble of Kabul which were often mistaken for yellow relief packages dropped from the air. They blew the limbs off foraging, hungry children.
In the village of Bibi Maru, I watched a woman called Orifa kneel at the graves of her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet weaver, and seven other members of her family, including six children, and two children who were killed next door.
An American F-16 aircraft had come out of a clear blue sky and dropped a Mk82 500-pound bomb on Orifa’s mud, stone and straw house. Orifa was away at the time. When she returned, she gathered the body parts.
Months later, a group of Americans came from Kabul and gave her an envelope with fifteen notes: a total of 15 dollars. “Two dollars for each of my family killed,” she said.
The invasion of Afghanistan was a fraud. In the wake of 9/11, the Taliban sought to distant themselves from Osama bin Laden. They were, in many respects, an American client with which the administration of Bill Clinton had done a series of secret deals to allow the building of a $3 billion natural gas pipeline by a US oil company consortium.
In high secrecy, Taliban leaders had been invited to the US and entertained by the CEO of the Unocal company in his Texas mansion and by the CIA at its headquarters in Virginia. One of the deal-makers was Dick Cheney, later George W. Bush’s Vice-President.
In 2010, I was in Washington and arranged to interview the mastermind of Afghanistan’s modern era of suffering, Zbigniew Brzezinski. I quoted to him his autobiography in which he admitted that his grand scheme for drawing the Soviets into Afghanistan had created “a few stirred up Muslims”.
“Do you have any regrets?” I asked. “Regrets! Regrets! What regrets?” When we watch the current scenes of panic at Kabul airport, and listen to journalists and generals in distant TV studios bewailing the withdrawal of “our protection”, isn’t it time to heed the truth of the past so that all this suffering never happens again?
The US policy of encircling and containing China spares no nation in Southeast Asia. Cambodia is also being targeted, though Cambodia has arrested or driven out the US-backed opposition party of choice – the Cambodia National Rescue Party – which now resides in Washington D.C.
There are still US-backed agitators operating in Cambodia, like supposed “labor leader” Rong Chhun whose arrest is being portrayed by the Western media as persecution and oppression – leaving out essential context including his US backing and his role in aiding the CNRP.
Johnson Choi Biz 