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Western perceptions of reality: Only televised threats matter


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By Lev Navrozov
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.
Lev Navrozov

Monday, July 31, 2006

China has been ignored in the West — partly owing to a daily torrent of thunderous news about terrorism, ever since the terrorist attack of 9/11 and, actual wars like the Iraq War. The "China threat" is an abstraction as was the German threat in 1938. The mainstream media always prefers the concrete to the abstract. One concrete murder may take more mainstream television time and public attention than the abstract fact that (according to my Statistical Abstract of the United States) there were — in the United States in 2002, for example — 1.4 million violent crimes, including 16,000 murders. War on violent crime? The U.S. political establishment is not interested.

In the "China threat" there has been nothing concrete to show on mainstream television except parading Chinese soldiers — a newsreel shown on mainstream U.S. television for many years. But surely in every country there are soldiers, and they march during military parades.

It would be different if there were a newsreel, representing Hu Jintao, showing his newly appointed generals the West on the world maps and exclaiming: "This is the West we will annihilate by our assassin's mace weapons unless the West surrenders unconditionally." This would be as good for the U.S. mainstream television as a newsreel, made by a witness of an honest-to-goodness murder. But there is no newsreel of Hu, explaining to his generals China's geostrategy. An integral part of this geostrategy is the total surprise, suddenness, improbability for the enemy of the assassin's mace attack launched by the dictatorship of China to annihilate the enemy unless the enemy surrenders unconditionally, and the dictatorship of China obtains the world as its colony.

The Western thinking of today is dominated by mainstream television, which does not think, but shows — what it can show, such as Chinese soldiers marching at a military parade.

Naturally, small wars in small countries — like the current war of Israel and Lebanon (Syria, Iran?) — engulf Western mainstream television — such wars present an infinite wealth of telegenic scenes of carnage (or mass murder), as compared with the "China threat," which presents none.

Linked with this mainstream television "showing" instead of thinking, is the Western general mental regression due to mass or pop or "democratic" culture and hence the absence of nationally or internationally known thinkers, and in particular political thinkers.

The Western culture of today is parochial. Many Americans know nothing of the outside world, and hence many of them assume that the outside world is "at a lower stage of development" and will or must strive for the same higher stage, which it will never reach, since the United States will meanwhile "develop" to a still higher stage.

In a (democratic) consumerist society all economic fields tend to advance to the same satisfaction of consumption, for capital will flow to those fields in which the consumers are not satisfied and are ready to pay more for their satisfaction. The result is what many Westerners perceive as (even or uniform) "development," whereby some countries are "developed," while others are "undeveloped."

Hence the military power is subordinated to the same "development." Since the United States is "economically developed," it is also "militarily developed" to the same degree.

It has not been noticed that the "developed" United States (population over 300 million) has been unable to cope in more than three years with Sunni (7 million) of a by no means "developed" Iraq.

In Stalin's Russia of the 1930s most of the population lived in the medieval countryside. But Stalin's armed forces, with their new tanks and artillery, routed the German troops at Moscow in December 1941.

To win, the military development should be not "even" or "uniform," but on the contrary "lopsided." If Hitler had invested all available resources into the development of nuclear weapons and paid no attention to tanks and artillery, he would have attained world domination. Now, his "even" or "uniform" development of his armed forces led to his defeat and suicide.

The Pentagon's surveys of China assume that the goal of China's dictatorship is to overtake the United States economically and hence militarily. This is impossible since when China "develops" to the present stage of "development" of the U.S., the latter will be more "developed" than now.

It never occurs to the authors of the Pentagon's surveys that

1) since the population of China exceeds that of the United States more than 4 times, it is inevitable that China will exceed the U.S. in all "indicators of deveopment," with the perspective to exceed them four times; and

2) China strives not for "even" or "uniform" Western "development" to catch up with the U.S., but for the lopsided growth of post-nuclear superweapons to assassin-mace the U.S., as the latter could nuke Japan if Japan had not surrendered unconditionally (and if the U.S. had had a sufficient stock of "atom bombs").

In the West the word dictatorship is never applied to China, and God forbid that Hu Jintao be called a dictator! Recall his visit in the United States. Isn't he the kindest men and the best friend of the United States?

Published in Beijing by Professor Chin Yunsheng of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is a book about torture in China. Is this an exposure denunciation, attack? Not at all! The professor describes 13 kinds of torture in China today. He says: "Torture in contemporary China is rooted in Chinese history."

An outsider may assume that will such a system of suppression the dictatorship can well keep its population under control. No, the dictatorship is vulnerable and may collapse as it did in Russia in 1991.

In June 2006, Zhengzhou University refused to recognize student degrees at one of its satellite campuses. What would the students do in a Western democracy?

Lawsuits. Complaints to higher academic and civil authorities. Meetings. Demonstrations. Media. Election of the students' committee to restore justice.

In China, some 10,000 students ransacked the university administration and the university library and looted the local banks, supermarkets, and shops.

Ironically, these 10,000 students believed that they were mistreated because China is a dictatorship, not a democracy, and so they came out against the dictatorship, including its universities, banks, supermarkets, and shops. A democratic uprising or revolution!

The only way for today's dictatorship to ensure its survival is to annihilate or subjugate the democratic West. Torture does not help. Besides, it also provokes discontent and the conviction that in the democratic West it is all different and as fine as in paradise. "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence."

Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.

Monday, July 31, 2006

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