Major U.S. paper targets red menace

History has dismissed V.I. Lenin’s prophecy at the birth of the Soviet communist state 90 years ago that “capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them” as just plain wrong, writes John Farmer, a columnist for the Star-Ledger, the nation's 25th largest newspaper.  "But maybe it’s not so much wrong as premature," he says.

The 223,000-circulation Star-Ledger, based within the New York metropolitan area, competes with the New York City press. (I should note that Farmer does not officially represent the Star-Ledger's position. But I suggest that the paper's longtime columnist would not write such an essay if he thought either the Newhouses, the media family that owns the paper, or their "independent" editors would strongly dislike it.)

Excerpts from Farmer's column:

"Across the capitalist West, there’s handwringing these days about the rise of Chinese economic power and how its communist bosses use it to export products and import Western jobs. They’re eating our lunch in the great game called globalization.

"What’s mentioned less often is the complicit role of U.S. corporations in this transfer of capital, jobs and economic clout to a Chinese government that uses it to run up huge trade surpluses that beggar the rest of the world. William Greider, who writes economics for the Nation magazine, examines it in depth in an article that reads like a bill of indictment against U.S. multinational corporations.

"'American companies,' Greider writes, 'agreed to the basic trade-off: China would let them make and sell stuff, and they would share technology and teach Chinese partners how it’s done. It lures major U.S. multinationals by offering tax breaks and subsidies — but also compels the companies to share their precious technologies with Chinese partners, who are also majority owners.'

"As an incidental benefit, Greider notes, the China trade empowers U.S. employers to export jobs if American unions don’t cave in on wages and benefits."

Farmer's column:
http://blog.nj.com/njv_john_farmer/2010/11/china_is_the_800-pound_panda_i.html

Greider's article:
http://www.thenation.com/article/155848/end-free-trade-globalization

Here is an essay of mine:
Joe McCarthy: still causing trouble
http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nfold/joe.html

The entanglement with Chinese and American business results in a great deal of communist influence in American industry. That's because the reds demand that Chinese businessmen cooperate with their covert agenda.

The anti-communist Epoch Times has reported that the Chinese government subsidizes Chinese-language newspapers in the West. It won a court case against one newspaper it accused of serving the Chinese government's ends.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/34835/

The Nation is well-known as a forum for progressives, and has often been tagged as a front for the ultraleft. However, progressives (a label covering moderate liberals and drastic radicals) are aware that they must defend their goals from the taint of communism. Still, as my previous post

Reds team with AFL-CIO
http://conantcensorshipissue.blogspot.com/2010/11/reds-team-with-afl-cio.html

shows, the communists are still up to their old trick of trying to penetrate and shelter behind the progressive movement. (To restate my own position: I tend to fall into the libertarian area, if anywhere, but I am cautious about various sharks using libertarian ideology to justify turning the rest of us into powerless serfs.)

Farmer's newspaper, The Star-Ledger, supported Joseph McCarthy's crusade against communist influence in government and American institutions, but when times changed "went along with the program" of pretty much ignoring problems of communist subversion. So Farmer's article is quite possibly an important milestone as media "swing to the right" (or really, do their job of reporting on communism problems).

Here is an essay of mine:

Joe McCarthy: still causing trouble
http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nfold/joe.html

The entanglement with Chinese and American business results in a great deal of communist influence in American industry. That's because the reds demand that Chinese businessmen cooperate with their covert agenda.

The anti-communist Epoch Times has reported that the Chinese government subsidizes Chinese-language newspapers in the West. It won a court case against one newspaper it accused of serving the Chinese government's ends.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/34835

It can also be that communist-sponsored firms purchase leverage in major American corporations.

China buying stake in GM
Excerpted from the Wall Street Journal:

"NEW YORK—In a sign of the changing fortunes of the world's top two economies, China's biggest auto maker, SAIC Motor Corp., is negotiating to acquire a stake of about 1% in General Motors Co. worth about $500 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.

"The U.S. auto maker also is prepared to sell more than $1 billion worth of shares to sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. Combined, the sales would give foreign investors roughly 16% of the shares to be sold next week under an initial public offering of stock, and give them a stake of some 4% in the Detroit auto maker. GM declined to comment on the investment talks.

"The issue of overseas investors buying GM shares in the company's IPO has been a sensitive one for the U.S. government, which plans to reduce its 61% stake in the auto maker to about 35% through the IPO.

The investment in GM by government-owned SAIC would be the latest in string of deals giving Chinese companies stakes in big-name Western companies. In 2007, sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp. took an initial 9.9% stake in securities firm Morgan Stanley. Pacific Century Motors recently took over GM's former steering unit, now called Nexteer, and Shougang Corp. bought Delphi Corp.'s brake unit."

Here is the WSJ article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704865704575610771579286344.html