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In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony (Hardcover) -- Reviewed Exclusively for BuzzFlash by Thom Hartmann

By Eamonn Fingleton

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What if the Japanese never really did “surrender” to us, inasmuch as we think they “adopted” our culture and values after World War II, but instead have been playing us for suckers, angry about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ever since? What if they’re collaborating with the Chinese in creating an Asian sphere of influence – decidedly un-democratic – to rule the world over the next century?

What if the Chinese have perfected a neo-Confucian system (with surprising resemblance to Machiavelli’s “The Prince”) that melds an oppressive and fascistic state with laissez faire capitalism, creating greater strength for both than has ever been seen before on Earth? And they are using this to both co-op and change our values, to take over our corporate and economic system, and to ultimately gain control of our political system? What if they were already well over halfway to that goal?

It all sounds a bit far-fetched to somebody raised on a steady diet of American corporate news. But the corporate news in this country is coming from the very corporations that are profiting from and empowering the Communist Chinese new Reich. We’ve been intentionally deceived, by “useful idiots” like Tom Friedman and openly staged news events like those surrounding the Yasukuni shrine “controversy” or the Sino-Japanese “war” over the Senkaku islands.

“In the Jaws of the Dragon: America’s Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony” is one of the most powerful, shocking, well-written, solidly documented, tear-the-scales-from-your-eyes books I’ve read in more than two decades. If you have any concern whatsoever about the future of American democracy, about peace in the world, about your own personal economic and political future, you must read this book.

Eamonn Fingleton, the author and former editor for Forbes and the Financial Times, has really done his homework. I couldn’t put this book down – at least 100 of it’s 310 pages are dog-eared and highlighted. It’s probably the most important book that’s ever been written about the future of our republic.

Because China now has the world’s largest foreign currency reserves (and the largest in world history), they effectively control – albeit currently with a light touch – the economy of the world. As Fingleton documents, “[T]he People’s Bank of China effectively controls both the level of American interest rates and the value of the American dollar.” Now. Today.

China now effectively controls the Panama Canal, and most of the ports on Mexico’s Pacific coast. “Chinese and other East Asian interests now largely control the vast network of communications satellites and undersea cables that make up the world’s international telecommnications system. Up to the early 1990s, the system had been under American control. … All that changed … in 2001…”

China controls her people, their work, lives, religion, politics, and thought. And in ways you never realized – but are so obvious when pointed out – strongly influence ours now, too. And that influence is not benign; American corporations have become complicit in creating a Chinese-controlled proto-fascistic economic and shadow political system right here in the United States.

I realize all this sounds like the ranting of a John Birch Society member who’s just read John Stormer’s “None Dare Call It Treason” for the first time. So judge for yourself. Buy this book, and actually take – make – the time to read it from cover to cover.

Your future, and our children’s future, is at stake.

Thom Hartmann is a New York Times bestselling Project Censored Award winning author and host of a nationally syndicated progressive radio talk show. You can learn more about Thom Hartmann at his website and find out what stations broadcast his program. You can also listen to Thom over the Internet.

THOM HARTMANN'S INDEPENDENT THINKER REVIEW OF THE MONTH FOR BUZZFLASH

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Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus with Feet of Clay

By Jim Wayne • Special to The Courier-Journal • November 16, 2009

In his quest of make the University of Kentucky a top twenty research university, entrepreneur-turned-university president Lee Todd appeared before the Appropriations and Revenue Committee in Frankfort last year pleading for money. To bolster his case he referenced Thomas Friedman’s best seller “The World Is Flat” as if everyone in the room accepted this defense of capitalism’s global reach as the word of God. Kentucky must interact with the fast changing international market, according to Dr. Todd, by building a world-class university to serve the needs of corporate globalization.

Not so fast, says Dr. Fred Goldstein, author of the recent “Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus with Feet of Clay.”

Goldstein’s well-researched work offers a clear understanding of what has lately counterpunched capitalism, leaving it sprawled on the mat. Much of the current pain we are all feeling, according to Goldstein, is related to three major shifts in the last twenty years: the collapse of Communism, the free hand of corporations and the lack of leadership and focus among workers.

With the fall of the Soviet Union and its satellites as well as the transformation of China since the late 1980s, the globe’s supply of workers exploded. Over 1.5 billion workers entered the work force exerting downward pressure on wages and working conditions for U.S. and Western European workers.

The big corporations, which control much of the flow of legislation in Washington and other major Western capitals, responded to the swelling ranks of workers by pushing down trade barriers, sending work to the least expensive sites on earth, regardless of the human and environmental costs. The corporate titans have gotten very rich and the workers are left to underbid each other for sinking wages and diminishing benefits.

The resistance to the collapse of the barriers has been minimal, according to Goldstein, because the workers are either not organized or lack leaders with enough bravura to challenge the power of corporations.

Goldstein is not kind to union leaders, accusing them of caving in to corporate demands time and again, leaving the workers with massive layoffs (the UAW membership went from 725,000 in 1979 to 178,000 in 2008, prior to the shutdowns announced recently by GM), or, for those who remain, smaller and smaller pieces of the pie.

Belief in the right to a job as well as rights to healthcare, a house and a living wage frame the arguments in Low-Wage Capitalism. These rights, according to Goldstein, supersede the hunger for profits of corporate leaders. The current wreckage of laissez-faire capitalism makes reading this book timely. One comes away with arguments not heard in mainstream America. For confirmed believers in the free market system, like Dr. Todd, this book offers challenging ideas that need an airing, if for no other reason than to force a reexamination of what most of us take for granted as the “way things are”.