Potter Blogging

Yeah. I've got the Harry Potter bug, too, and have been trying to blog while infected with it for two -- make that three -- nights straight. I should finish tonight, which is good, 'cause it's been crowding into my brain during blogging time. In the interest of getting that monkey off my back more quickly, I'll simply point to a few noteworthy items I encountered today.

Two Interesting Columns on China

Via RealClear Politics come a Max Boot piece on China's stealth war with the United States and a Thomas Friedman piece on how intertwined the American and Chinese economies have become. The first of these may be old news to some, as it focuses on China's asymmetric warfare doctrine as outlined in Unrestricted Warfare, but to those not in the know, it will be a good general introduction. I strongly recommend it, especially since it explains why the first two stories of my last Chinamerica Roundup fit so nicely together and how the Unocal deal was supposed to have fit in. All are mentioned in the last excerpted paragraph below.

"Unrestricted Warfare" recognizes that it is practically impossible to challenge the U.S. on its own terms. No one else can afford to build mega-expensive weapons systems like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will cost more than $200 billion to develop. "The way to extricate oneself from this predicament," the authors write, "is to develop a different approach."

Their different approaches include financial warfare (subverting banking systems and stock markets), drug warfare (attacking the fabric of society by flooding it with illicit drugs), psychological and media warfare (manipulating perceptions to break down enemy will), international law warfare (blocking enemy actions using multinational organizations), resource warfare (seizing control of vital natural resources), even ecological warfare (creating man-made earthquakes or other natural disasters).

...

The bid by the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Co., to acquire Unocal? Resource warfare. Attempts by China's spy apparatus to infiltrate U.S. high-tech firms and defense contractors? Technological warfare. China siding against the U.S. in the U.N. Security Council over the invasion of Iraq? International law warfare. Gen. Zhu's threat to nuke the U.S.? Media warfare.

The Friedman article focuses on the economic side of the China problem. This article I am not as enthusiastic about, but mainly because I am not sure all the economics is correct. (And that leaves aside Friedman's obligatory liberal silliness about how we are "addicted" to oil.) But it does mention a problem I can see with the Chinese practice of buying up dollars to peg the yuan.

But China's foreign exchange reserves today are nearly $750 billion and heading for $1 trillion - most in U.S. Treasury notes. If China is compelled by the U.S. to revalue its currency, and effectively devalue the dollar further, Beijing will take a big hit on all of its dollar reserves - especially since most experts say the dollar has to be devalued by 30 to 40 percent against the Chinese currency to have any impact on the trade balance. That would also be likely to affect the dollar's value against other currencies and create pressure for inflation and higher interest rates in the U.S.

This is something I'd love to see someone like George Reisman address. Has China been saving us from our own inflationary policies? If so, can it yank the rug from beneath us?

Froma Harrop Makes Sense for a Change

That, in and of itself, is newsworthy, coming from a woman who tells the Democrats to stop sounding like moonbats from one side of her mouth (although it's too late to save their reputation as "the party of sound science") -- while nuttily blaming "oil" for the London bombings and frantically urging some other nation than Canada as a model for (the same old idea of) socialized medicine -- from the other.

Today, she says the following:

Parents should oversee their children's food consumption. Their responsibility does not end because Taco Bell is putting the food on the plate. They should know where the kid is dining and what he's buying. If their children won't obey orders to stay away from fatty menus, parents can still exercise their power of the purse. Translation: No money for fast food. And there is no law barring parents from serving healthy meals at home.

So she made sense. I never said it was a great article. But it's pretty astute coming from a lefty. So sue me!

(Note to the literal-minded: Ask someone what the idiom "to squeeze blood from a turnip" means before suing. I'm a scientist, dammit.)

-- CAV