Monday, June 05, 2006
Wen Ho Lee
Atrios reminds us of that flap, so I'll comment-whore since I didn't catch the post until so late in the day.
BTW -- whatever happened to the "horrible China threat (TM)" from the 1990s? I was paranoid enough, FWIW, to think that it was all a set up: the religious right whines and complains about Chinese (shall we say, at many levels both in terms of what they did and their motivations, Imperial Rome-like -- i.e. admittedly horrendous) treatment of Christians and the racist element frets of the "yellow peril" so that viewing China as a threat becomes the domain of the whackos only. Meanwhile the very real threats (the fake Wen Ho Lee threat vs. the real Leung threat, writ large) posed by China (in particular and largely ignored was the role of China in starting the domino effect regarding the nuclearization of South Asia -- India's impetus for developing the bomb was largely due to the fact that, as we often forget, it has a long standing border dispute with nuclear China -- China not only gave India cause for developing the bomb but also helped Pakistan which further helped others with nuclear development) got ignored by the general populace: as occured with NAFTA, the focus of opposition to being made and only made by the loonies gave big-business cover to do something against the nation's best interests.
BTW -- whatever happened to the "horrible China threat (TM)" from the 1990s? I was paranoid enough, FWIW, to think that it was all a set up: the religious right whines and complains about Chinese (shall we say, at many levels both in terms of what they did and their motivations, Imperial Rome-like -- i.e. admittedly horrendous) treatment of Christians and the racist element frets of the "yellow peril" so that viewing China as a threat becomes the domain of the whackos only. Meanwhile the very real threats (the fake Wen Ho Lee threat vs. the real Leung threat, writ large) posed by China (in particular and largely ignored was the role of China in starting the domino effect regarding the nuclearization of South Asia -- India's impetus for developing the bomb was largely due to the fact that, as we often forget, it has a long standing border dispute with nuclear China -- China not only gave India cause for developing the bomb but also helped Pakistan which further helped others with nuclear development) got ignored by the general populace: as occured with NAFTA, the focus of opposition to being made and only made by the loonies gave big-business cover to do something against the nation's best interests.
# posted by alberich @ 3:18 PM 
