警察国家美利坚

民主，最危险的宗教

建立在谎言上的国家–第一卷–美国如何变得富有

NATIONS BUILT ON LIES — VOLUME 1 — How the US Became Rich — Updated

美国随笔 Essays on America

美国警察国家》第一卷免费电子书

宣传与媒体 PROPAGANDA AND THE MEDIA

PROPAGANDA and THE MEDIA — Updated!

建立在谎言之上的国家 — 第2卷 — 失败状态下的生活 — New! 新的！

NATIONS BUILT ON LIES — VOLUME 2 — Life in a Failed State — Updated

NATIONS BUILT ON LIES — VOLUME 3 — The Branding of America— Updated

BERNAYS AND PROPAGANDA— Updated!

The Jewish Hasbara in All its Glory HASBARA — 犹太哈斯巴拉的荣耀

Kamila Valieva

第八章任意和不负责任的执法 — Chapter 8 — Arbitrary and Unaccountable Law Enforcement

拉里·罗曼诺夫免费电子书和PDF文章

CN — LARRY ROMANOFF: 警察国家美利坚 — 第一章-警察国家的崛起 — CHAPTER 1-The Rise of the Police State

Uncategorized

Jackie Chan

-

November 16, 2025

0

警察国家美利坚

第一章-警察国家的崛起 — CHAPTER 1-The Rise of the Police State

第二章联邦调查局 — Chapter 2 — The FBI

美国联邦调查局反情报程序 — CHAPTER 3 – COINTELPRO

第四章普遍公共监督 — Chapter 4 — Universal Public Surveillance

第五章其他监视 – Chapter 5 — Other Surveillance

第6章寻找无政府主义者，或者可能只是政治活动家 — Chapter 6 — Searching for Anarchists, or Maybe Just Political Activists

第七章赢得信息战 — Chapter 7 — Winning the Information War

第9章警察的军事化 — Chapter 9 — The Militarisation of the Police

第十章占领华尔街 — Chapter 10 — Occupy Wall Street

第11章恐吓媒体和颠覆媒体 — Chapter 11 — Intimidating the Media & Subverting the Press

第12章捷径：民主走向法西斯主义 — Chapter 12 — The Short Road: Democracy to Fascism

第13章下一次美国革命？预期的内乱 — Chapter 13 — The Next American Revolution? Anticipated Civil Unrest

第一章-警察国家的崛起 — CHAPTER 1–The Rise of the Police State

作者：拉里 ·罗曼诺夫 —By Larry Romanoff

译者：珍珠

CHINESE ENGLISH

警察国家美国》第一卷免费电子书

By the end of the Vietnam war, US corporations were no longer competitive in the world economy and were losing the bulk of their domestic market to imports, leading to de-industrialisation and the large-scale relocation of manufacturing to Asia, primarily China. Since then, the US has experienced large and increasing trade deficits regardless of currency exchange rates or other external conditions. With its military adventures financed entirely on debt, the US also began running increasingly larger budget deficits, with increasingly fewer funds for public programs like social welfare or education, or to maintain or rebuild its already-dilapidated physical infrastructure. After the US abandoned the gold standard and unilaterally scuttled the Bretton-Woods agreement, debt financing for the Vietnam war resulted in a massive expansion of the money supply, leading to a decade of ruinous inflation with the US dollar depreciating by about 95%.

到越南战争结束时，美国公司在世界经济中不再具有竞争力，国内市场的大部分被进口产品占据，导致去工业化和制造业大规模转移到亚洲，主要是中国。自那以后，无论汇率或其他外部条件如何，美国都经历了巨大且不断增长的贸易逆差。由于其军事冒险完全靠债务融资，美国也开始出现越来越大的预算赤字，用于社会福利或教育等公共项目的资金越来越少，用于维护或重建其已经破败的实体基础设施的资金也越来越少。在美国放弃金本位制并单方面破坏布雷顿森林协议后，越南战争的债务融资导致了货币供应的大规模扩张，导致了十年的毁灭性通货膨胀，美元贬值了约95%。

Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th president of the United States. A former actor and president of the Screen Actors Guild, he was elected governor of California in 1966 and US president in 1981. He is standing in front of a sign reading ‘Let’s Make America Great Again’, during his electoral campaign. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)

罗纳德·里根，美国第40任总统。他曾是演员和美国演员工会主席，1966年当选为加利福尼亚州州长，1981年当选为美国总统。在竞选期间，他站在一块写着“让我们让美国再次伟大”的牌子前。（图片来源：MPI/盖蒂图片社）

It was then, at the end of the 1970s, that the US experienced the biggest political upheaval in its recent history, what James Petras appropriately called “The Great Transformation”, brought about by Bernays’ secret government. In another Volume, I will detail the massive corporate social changes that occurred in the US in the early 1980s, but will discuss some here.

20世纪70年代末，美国经历了近代史上最大的政治动荡，詹姆斯·佩特拉斯恰如其分地称之为“大转型”，由伯奈斯秘密政府带来。在另一卷中，我将详细介绍20世纪80年代初美国发生的大规模企业社会变革，但会在这里讨论一些。

It was during this time under President Ronald Reagan that the invisible elite took the US government and the nation on an alarming ideological turn to the extreme right, and everything changed. In addition to the mass deindustrialisation of the country and the destruction of labor unions and workers’ rights, Reagan opened the doors to deregulation and privatisation, and effectively turned the keys of the country over to the elites and their large corporations and banks. It was this that paved the way for the parade of human, economic, political and military atrocities that continue to this day.

正是在罗纳德·里根总统执政期间，隐形精英将美国政府和国家带到了令人担忧的意识形态转向极右翼，一切都发生了变化。除了国家的大规模去工业化和工会及工人权利的破坏外，里根还打开了放松管制和私有化的大门，并有效地将国家的钥匙交给了精英及其大公司和银行。正是这一点为持续至今的人类、经济、政治和军事暴行铺平了道路。

President Ronald Reagan addresses the nation from the Oval Office ontax reduction legislation. Source

罗纳德·里根总统在椭圆形办公室就减税立法向全国发表讲话。来源

This was when Reagan, under the advice of his handlers, proclaimed at least 200 Presidential Directives designed almost without exception for the benefit of the secret government and their banks and corporations. One need only look at the historical record to prove this point. Reagan was painfully unintelligent, without the mental capacity to have even conceived of such plans for the devastation and cannibalisation of so many nations, all of which were illegal by every measure and concocted solely to satisfy the commercial greed of Bernays’ invisible people. These were primarily private laws dictated by the secret government which authorised the use of the US military and CIA to overthrow dozens of governments and to fund and install dictators that would permit the wholesale plundering of nations with unconscionable civilian repression resulting in at least 10 million deaths. This was when US militarism and military repression became openly mainstream activities, and which continued until the world could no longer stomach the tales of atrocities. This was when the CIA dusted off its 1,000-page torture manual, accumulated from long experience in the Philippines and Indonesia, and distributed it widely for decades to America’s puppet dictators. It was when we saw an explosion in the US military budget as well, tripling in a short time to the extent that the US today spends almost twice as much on its military as the entire rest of the world combined, when the US global military expansion accelerated even as the domestic economic situation degenerated.

当时，里根在其幕僚的建议下，宣布了至少200项总统指令，几乎无一例外地为秘密政府及其银行和公司的利益而设计。人们只需要看看历史记录就可以证明这一点。里根非常愚蠢，甚至没有精神能力构想出这样的计划，对如此多的国家进行破坏和蚕食，所有这些计划从各方面来看都是非法的，只是为了满足伯奈斯隐形人的商业贪婪而编造的。这些主要是秘密政府制定的私法，该政府授权使用美国军队和中央情报局推翻数十个政府，资助和任命独裁者，允许对国家进行大规模掠夺，进行不合情理的平民镇压，导致至少1000万人死亡。当时，美国的军国主义和军事镇压成为公开的主流活动，并一直持续到世界无法再忍受暴行的故事。就在那时，中央情报局重新翻阅了其1000页的酷刑手册，该手册是从菲律宾和印度尼西亚的长期经验中积累起来的，并在几十年的时间里广泛分发给了美国的傀儡独裁者。就在那时，我们看到美国的军事预算也出现了爆炸式增长，在短时间内增加了两倍，以至于今天的美国在军事上的支出几乎是世界其他国家总和的两倍，尽管国内经济形势恶化，但美国的全球军事扩张仍在加速。

This was when Washington’s neocon Zionists took virtually full control of US foreign policy, especially including the Middle East but also utilising the US military for their aggressive financial predation of South and Central America. This was when the US Congress began to lose the final vestiges of a democratic government, surrendering its legislative and oversight powers to the White House and AIPAC. This was when the US entered its long series of current wars, from Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria, meant to end with the destruction of Iran and Somalia, all to ensure the American Jews’ (many of whom are dual US-Israeli citizens) plans of solidifying Israel’s overwhelming power in the Middle East.

当时，华盛顿的新保守派犹太复国主义者几乎完全控制了美国的外交政策，特别是包括中东地区，但也利用美国军队对南美洲和中美洲进行了侵略性的金融掠夺。就在那时，美国国会开始失去民主政府的最后残余，将其立法和监督权移交给白宫和AIPAC。当时，美国开始了从阿富汗到伊拉克和叙利亚的一系列战争，旨在以摧毁伊朗和索马里而告终，所有这些都是为了确保美国犹太人（其中许多是美国和以色列双重公民）巩固以色列在中东压倒性权力的计划。

And in all of this, we witnessed a steady growth of the domestic police state apparatus conducted with military aggressiveness. You will recall from the Chapter on Bernays and Democracy Control the report produced for the Trilateral Commission by Samuel Huntington, where he complained that the civil protests and disobedience were a crisis of democracy and that the public needed to be properly indoctrinated. This was the origin of America’s decisive swing to civil repression and fear as a means to ensure the desired apathy and noninvolvement of the people in the affairs of their government.

在这一切中，我们目睹了以军事侵略性进行的国内警察国家机器的稳步增长。你会记得塞缪尔·亨廷顿为三边委员会撰写的报告《伯奈斯与民主控制》一章，他在报告中抱怨说，公民抗议和不服从是民主的危机，公众需要得到适当的灌输。这就是美国果断转向公民镇压和恐惧的起源，以此作为确保人民对政府事务漠不关心和不参与的一种手段。

This was when the NSA so broadly expanded both its domestic and international espionage activities into ever more illegal areas and methods, and when the FBI became increasingly involved in suppressing dissension in all its forms. This was when we began to see the enormous growth of the domestic security and quasi-military agencies like Homeland Security and the proliferation of a multitude of repressive government powers and policing agencies involved in every aspect of civilian life. It was when decisions were made to create an enormous civil-military bureaucracy focused on domestic civilian control, when the Department of Homeland Security built and staffed its 800 internment camps in preparation for the civil unrest that would be unleashed from the invisible government’s planned economic and social policies.

当时，美国国家安全局将其国内和国际间谍活动广泛扩展到越来越非法的领域和方法，而联邦调查局也越来越多地参与压制各种形式的纠纷。就在那时，我们开始看到国内安全和国土安全等准军事机构的巨大增长，以及参与平民生活各个方面的众多镇压性政府权力和警务机构的激增。当决定建立一个庞大的军民官僚机构，专注于国内平民控制时，国土安全部建造并配备了800个拘留营，为隐形政府计划的经济和社会政策引发的内乱做准备。

A large FEMA trailer park is seen next to the University of New Orleans campus in the Lakeview area August 25, 2006 in New Orleans, LA.MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES

2006年8月25日，在路易斯安那州新奥尔良市湖景区的新奥尔良大学校园旁，可以看到一个大型的联邦紧急事务管理局拖车公园

Naturally, there was increasingly less funding available for the nation’s social programs, resulting in the gradual evisceration of all social services, primarily education and health care, the huge budget deficits and national debt being used to justify dismantling the social safety net. This was when Reagan claimed that a universal health care plan “would mean the end of freedom in America”. Included here was the new hysteria for privatisation, the prison system perhaps most worthy of note since it reflected a planned return to the world of slavery and convict leasing.

自然地，可用于国家社会项目的资金越来越少，导致所有社会服务，主要是教育和医疗保健，巨额预算赤字和国债被用来为拆除社会安全网辩护。当时里根声称，全民医疗保健计划“将意味着美国自由的终结”。其中包括对私有化的新歇斯底里，监狱系统可能是最值得注意的，因为它反映了奴隶制和罪犯租赁世界的计划回归。

This was when Bernays’ elite bankers began the push to the extreme financialisation of the US economy and for deregulation, especially of the US financial system. When we look at the facts, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that these massive financial and tax changes occurred primarily to assist the Jewish bankers and elite industrialists in a vast plan to eviscerate the lower and middle classes and embark on what was perhaps the greatest planned transfer of wealth in human history.

就在那时，伯奈斯的精英银行家们开始推动美国经济的极端金融化和放松管制，尤其是对美国金融体系的放松管制。当我们审视事实时，似乎无法避免这样一个结论，即这些大规模的金融和税收变化主要是为了帮助犹太银行家和精英实业家制定一项庞大的计划，以消灭中下层阶级，并开始可能是人类历史上最伟大的财富转移计划。

President Bill Clinton addressing a White House conference to discuss ideas about how best to reform Social Security to ensure its solvency well into the 21st century, 1998. (Credit: Robert Giroux/Getty Images)

1998年，比尔·克林顿总统在白宫会议上发表讲话，讨论如何最好地改革社会保障制度，以确保其在21世纪的偿付能力。（图片来源：Robert Giroux/Getty Images）

As Reagan, and then Bush Sr. disappeared from the political scene, Clinton had already been primed to complete the transition. It was under Clinton’s watch that the invisible government effectively legitimised a war on social policy and completed the removal of worker protection. It was his weakness and virtual treason that conspired to de-regulate the US banking system, repealing the Glass-Steagal Act, opening wide the doors to the financialisation of the economy, abandoning US economic policy to the FED and the Jewish bankers of Wall Street, paving the way for their massive profits leading to the 2008 social collapse.

随着里根和老布什从政治舞台上消失，克林顿已经做好了完成过渡的准备。在克林顿的监督下，隐形政府有效地使社会政策战争合法化，并完成了工人保护的取消。正是他的软弱和实质上的叛国行为，密谋对美国银行体系进行去监管，废除了《格拉斯-斯蒂格尔法案》，为经济的金融化敞开了大门，将美国的经济政策交给了美联储和华尔街的犹太银行家，为他们的巨额利润铺平了道路，导致了2008年的社会崩溃。

It was also under Clinton that American Jews were inserted in about 80% of all strategic posts, effectively taking control of US foreign policy in the Middle East, thus ensuring Israel’s military and hegemonic ambitions were fully imported into the White House and that the US military would execute them by proxy. It was also Clinton who initiated the expansion of the prison system and much of the repressive police state anti-terrorist legislation. It is true the US has never been a paragon of socialism but it was Clinton’s conversion to Zionism and his own ideological orientation that strongly propelled the US on its path from the remaining vestiges of humane social policy and good government to a police state.

也正是在克林顿的领导下，美国犹太人被安排在大约80%的战略岗位上，有效地控制了美国在中东的外交政策，从而确保以色列的军事和霸权野心完全输入白宫，美国军队将通过代理处决他们。也是克林顿发起了监狱系统的扩张和许多镇压性的警察国家反恐立法。诚然，美国从来不是社会主义的典范，但正是克林顿对犹太复国主义的皈依和他自己的意识形态取向，有力地推动了美国从人道社会政策和善政府的残余走向警察国家。

Under George Bush, America more or less completed the transition to surrendering full control of its legislative and executive branches to AIPAC and the invisible government. In many respects Bush was the ideal puppet; gullible, grateful, eager to please, surprisingly unintelligent and uninformed, weak and easily-led; putty in the hands of his neocon Zionist masters.

在乔治·布什的领导下，美国或多或少地完成了将立法和行政部门的完全控制权移交给AIPAC和隐形政府的过渡。在许多方面，布什是理想的傀儡；轻信、感激、渴望取悦、出奇地愚蠢和无知、软弱和容易被领导；他的新犹太复国主义大师手中的油灰。

The multiple outrageous wars, the massive increase in military spending, the vast network of torture prisons, the unlimited unregulated freedom for the FED and Wall Street to work their magic of financial destruction and wealth transfer. There was also a new campaign with heavy media support, to demonise Muslims and to repress domestic activists, especially anyone critical of Israel. And of course, coincident with the financialisation of the US economy and the evisceration of the middle class, under Bush we saw the continued dumbing-down of education, a devastating rollback of social programs and the rise of a vast political-police apparatus designed for domestic suppression and civil war.

多场令人发指的战争、军费开支的大幅增加、庞大的酷刑监狱网络、美联储和华尔街无限的不受监管的自由，以发挥其金融破坏和财富转移的魔力。还有一场得到媒体大力支持的新运动，妖魔化穆斯林，镇压国内活动家，特别是任何批评以色列的人。当然，在美国经济金融化和中产阶级被掏空的同时，在布什的领导下，我们看到了教育的持续愚蠢化，社会项目的毁灭性倒退，以及为国内镇压和内战而设计的庞大政治警察机构的兴起。

Obama inherited these social, financial and military crises and may well have harbored hopes for a change in direction but, due in equal parts to naivete, ambition and cowardice, he capitulated to the demands of the Jewish secret government, with all parts of the grand plan continuing unabated and some increasing in both scope and brutality. Under Obama and an increasingly compliant and complicit Congress, the falsely-christened “Homeland Security” apparatus has grown exponentially, today comprising almost 400,000 employees and a budget of almost $200 billion. And few military actions deserve more vicious condemnation than his destruction and looting of Libya by proxy for his Jewish masters.

奥巴马继承了这些社会、金融和军事危机，很可能对改变方向抱有希望，但由于天真、野心和懦弱，他屈服于犹太秘密政府的要求，宏伟计划的所有部分都有增无减，有些部分的范围和残忍性都在增加。在奥巴马和越来越顺从和同谋的国会的领导下，这个被错误命名为“国土安全”的机构呈指数级增长，如今拥有近40万名员工和近2000亿美元的预算。很少有军事行动比他通过犹太主人的代理人对利比亚的破坏和掠夺更应该受到恶毒的谴责。

The essential point is that all of these items, programs, processes and events were related, part of the same plan concocted by the same invisible government. Today we are in the final stages of the deep structural changes involved in this grand process, witnessing more dismantling of social services and education, a still-increasing financialisation of the economy, the continued impoverishment of society, and a vast increase in both domestic and international espionage and surveillance as part of the support mechanism for the police state. It is partially due to the fact that the event of 9-11 formed such an integral part of this program that a great many remain firmly convinced 9-11 was a planned event meant to facilitate and justify much of the remainder of the agenda, especially civilian repression and curtailing of civil rights, and to justify the perpetual war on terror that would itself be used as a kind of proxy for increasing world domination.

关键在于，所有这些项目、计划、流程和事件都是相互关联的，是同一个隐形政府制定的同一计划的一部分。今天，我们正处于这一伟大进程所涉及的深层次结构性变革的最后阶段，目睹了社会服务和教育的进一步解体，经济的金融化仍在加剧，社会的持续贫困，以及作为警察国家支持机制一部分的国内和国际间谍和监视的大幅增加。部分原因是9·11事件是该计划的一个组成部分，许多人仍然坚信9·11是一个有计划的事件，旨在促进和证明议程其余部分的合理性，特别是平民镇压和剥夺公民权利，并为永久反恐战争辩护，这场战争本身将被用作加强世界统治的一种代理。

David Rockefeller (L) with his brothers in New York in September 1967; (L-R) David, Winthrop, John D Rockefeller III, Nelson and Laurance

1967年9月，大卫·洛克菲勒（左）和他的兄弟们在纽约；（左-右）大卫、温斯罗普、约翰·D·洛克菲勒三世、纳尔逊和劳伦斯

In case you’re tempted to dismiss the above comment as an over-reaction or a kind of ‘conspiracy theory’, consider this quote by David Rockefeller in an address to the Trilateral Commission. Rockefeller is referring to the Bilderberg Group – whose existence was hotly denied for decades and derided as just another conspiracy theory: “We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected the promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of public scrutiny during those years. But the world is now more sophisticated and fully prepared to march towards our one world-government. The supranational sovereignty of our intellectual elites and world bankers is surely preferable to the globe as a whole.” It was also Rockefeller who stated that his group needed one final dramatic impetus, “another Pearl Harbor event”, to bring this New World Government to the throne. 9-11 was that event.

如果你想将上述评论视为过度反应或阴谋论，请考虑大卫·洛克菲勒在三边委员会的演讲中的这句话。洛克菲勒指的是彼尔德伯格集团，几十年来，该集团的存在一直被强烈否认，并被嘲笑为另一种阴谋论：“我们感谢《华盛顿邮报》、《纽约时报》、《时代》杂志和其他伟大的出版物，它们的董事出席了我们的会议，并尊重了近四十年来的自由裁量权承诺。如果我们在这些年里受到公众监督，我们就不可能制定我们的世界计划。但世界现在更加复杂，并已做好充分准备，朝着我们的一个世界政府迈进。我们的知识精英和世界银行家的超国家主权肯定比整个世界更可取。”洛克菲勒还表示，他的集团需要最后一个巨大的动力。另一个珍珠港事件”，将这个新世界政府带上王位。911就是这样的事件。

The Jewish Zionists who hold, or have held, key positions in various presidential administrations and in the scaffold that supports the police state, have featured prominently in smoothing the transition. James Petras pointed out that it was Michael Chertoff who intervened immediately after 9/11 “to free scores of Israeli spy suspects and 5 Israeli Mossad agents who had been witnessed filming and celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center and were under active investigation by the FBI”. Chertoff was also the chief architect of the global war on terror and of the Patriot Act, both of which have served to severely limit civil and legal rights and to accelerate the transition to a police state. In no small part, their support emerges from the majority of members of the US Congress who define themselves as “Israel First”, and who appear more than willing to place the interests of that nation second to those of their own.

在各个总统政府和支持警察国家的脚手架上担任或曾经担任关键职务的犹太复国主义者在平稳过渡方面发挥了突出作用。詹姆斯·佩特拉斯指出，是迈克尔·切尔托夫在9/11事件后立即进行干预，“释放了数十名以色列间谍嫌疑人和5名以色列摩萨德特工，他们目睹了世贸中心被毁的拍摄和庆祝活动，并正受到联合局的积极调查”。切尔托夫也是全球反恐战争和《爱国者法案》的首席设计师，这两项法案都严重限制了公民权利和法律权利，并加速了向警察国家的过渡。在很大程度上，他们的支持来自美国国会的大多数议员，他们将自己定义为“以色列第一”，并且似乎非常愿意将该国的利益置于自己的利益之后。

In 2013, Finian Cunningham wrote a valuable article in which he critically and bluntly outlined concerns about the US totalitarian system, claiming that US democracy was for all intents and purposes a dead corpse. He began by stating that the desperate US manhunt for Snowden showed above all else how petrified US leaders have become of ordinary citizens revealing the truths about their despotic rule. He wrote:

2013年，菲尼安·坎宁安写了一篇有价值的文章，他在文章中批判性地、直截了当地概述了人们对美国极权主义制度的担忧，声称美国的民主实际上是一具死尸。他首先表示，美国对斯诺登的绝望追捕首先表明，美国领导人对揭露其专制统治真相的普通公民变得多么恐惧。他写道：

“American society is collapsing from the sheer weight of its decrepit capitalist economy. The social system is unsustainable. It is like a distended rotten sack that is coming apart at the seams from inexorable burgeoning pressure. Today, the US has evolved into a dystopia, not a democracy, where obscene wealth and privilege stand in the face of massive poverty and misery. One indicator of this abysmal inequality is the fact that the 400 richest Americans have more material wealth than 155 million of their fellow citizens combined. Another datum: some 50 million Americans – a sixth of the population – are surviving on food handouts. Unemployment, homelessness, suicide rates, prescription drug addiction, rampant gun crime all speak in different ways of social meltdown.”

“美国社会正因其破败的资本主义经济的巨大压力而崩溃。社会体系是不可持续的。它就像一个膨胀的腐烂袋子，在无情的新兴压力下从缝隙中裂开。今天，美国已经演变成一个反乌托邦，而不是一个民主国家，在那里，面对巨大的贫困和苦难，淫秽的财富和特权依然存在。这种严重不平等的一个指标是，400名最富有的美国人拥有的物质财富超过了1.55亿同胞的总和。另一个数据：约有5000万美国人——占人口的六分之一——靠食物救济生存。失业、无家可归、自杀率、处方药成瘾、猖獗的枪支犯罪都以不同的方式说明了社会崩溃。”

He wrote that it was hard to believe that not so long ago the US was regarded as the economic paradigm of the world, but now increasingly resembles a giant sprawling ghetto of unremitting poverty interspersed with a few gated rich communities populated by the top one percent of society. “The American ruling class, as with their elite counterparts around the world, are figuratively sitting within their privileged niches and petrified by the mounting discontent ‘outside’. Through their criminal ransacking and rigging of wealth, the powers-that-be have through their own insatiable greed created a powerful potential enemy – virtually the entire population, both in the US and around the world. In this highly unstable situation of elites and masses that bankrupt capitalism has furnished, “democracy” can no longer be tolerated by the rulers. That is why the rulers have embarked on massive information gathering, monitoring, spying and surveillance. It is all about maintaining “control” of a precarious and explosive disequilibrium.”

他写道，很难相信不久前美国还被视为世界经济的典范，但现在它越来越像一个巨大的、不断蔓延的贫困贫民区，中间穿插着几个由社会顶层1%人口组成的封闭式富裕社区。“与世界各地的精英阶层一样，美国统治阶级象征性地坐在他们的特权地位内，被外界日益增长的不满所吓倒。通过他们对财富的犯罪掠夺和操纵，当权者通过他们自己贪得无厌的贪婪创造了一个强大的潜在敌人——几乎是美国和世界各地的全体人口。在破产资本主义所提供的精英和群众的高度不稳定的情况下，统治者再也不能容忍“民主”。这就是为什么统治者开始了大规模的信息收集、监控、间谍和监视。这一切都是为了保持对不稳定和爆炸性不平衡的“控制”。”

Cunningham again: “One basic duty of any state is to protect its citizens from foreign enemies who are conventionally understood to be state militaries or non-state terrorist groups. But from Snowden’s revelations of US government surveillance of telecommunications, the vast bulk of America’s spying is on civilians. Snowden disclosed in one instance how Chinese hospitals and universities – not military installations – were among the many international civilian targets for American government snooping. US national security officials defend this global dragnet method as a necessary way to trawl for terrorists.” But we now know that no terrorist plots have been uncovered anywhere, at least none that were not fabricated by the FBI, and in truth the only dangers from terrorism today are those created by the US itself. Journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote that Americans have learned that the US surveillance apparatus is not directed primarily at the Chinese or Russian governments or terrorists, but at them, and that “what has been ‘harmed’ is not the national security of the US but the ability of its political leaders to work against their own citizens and citizens around the world in the dark, with zero transparency or real accountability.”

坎宁安再次表示：“任何国家的一项基本职责都是保护其公民免受外国敌人的侵害，这些敌人通常被理解为国家军队或非国家恐怖组织。但从斯诺登揭露的美国政府对电信的监控来看，美国的绝大部分间谍活动都是针对平民的。斯诺登在一个例子中透露，中国的医院和大学——而不是军事设施——是美国政府窥探的众多国际民用目标之一。美国国家安全官员为这种全球拉网方法辩护，认为这是追捕恐怖分子的必要方式。”但我们现在知道，任何地方都没有发现恐怖主义阴谋，至少没有一个不是联邦调查局捏造的，事实上，今天恐怖主义的唯一危险是美国自己制造的。记者格伦·格林沃尔德写道，美国人已经了解到，美国的监控机构主要不是针对中国或俄罗斯政府或恐怖分子，而是针对他们，“受到伤害的不是美国的国家安全，而是其政治领导人在黑暗中以零透明度或真正的问责制对抗本国公民和世界各地公民的能力。”

Cunningham wrote, and I concur, that America’s increasing militarism and an imperative to assert control over social meltdown and rebellion, were the result of the imploding neocon capitalist system. He said this “historic failure of capitalism explains the alarming growth in militarism and the intensification of domestic surveillance powers and civil repression. It was in this context where he claimed “American democracy is, for all intents and purposes, a dead corpse. Only criminal wars and repression of its citizens are keeping the moribund system on a life-support system.” In the 1970s, US Senator Frank Church led an investigation into illicit American government covert operations and warned that if the NSA were to ever become deployed against the American public, as opposed to foreign enemies, then that country’s democracy would be finished. That is precisely the present abysmal outcome of secret US state powers.

坎宁安写道，我也同意，美国日益增强的军国主义以及对社会崩溃和叛乱进行控制的必要性，是新保守主义资本主义制度崩溃的结果。他说，“资本主义的历史性失败解释了军国主义的惊人增长以及国内监督权力和公民镇压的加剧。正是在这种背景下，他声称”美国民主实际上是一具死尸。只有犯罪战争和对公民的镇压才能使垂死的系统维持生命。“20世纪70年代，美国参议员弗兰克·丘奇领导了一项对美国政府非法秘密行动的调查，并警告说，如果美国国家安全局被部署针对美国公众，而不是外国敌人，那么该国的民主就会终结。这正是美国秘密国家权力目前的糟糕结果。

No police state can function without a centralisation of power. This is especially important in areas of surveillance and espionage coupled with a reliable and ruthless quasi-military and police for control of civilian conduct and political dissension. It’s not for nothing that power has been increasingly concentrated in the White House for several decades now, nor is it an accident that we have seen legislative changes creating the immense Homeland Security apparatus, as well as the illegal creation of a widespread domestic surveillance network. Successive US Presidents have not only assumed powers not entirely theirs but have increasingly taken advantage of what are called Presidential Directives, which are one-man executive orders made under the guise of advice from the National Security Council and which have the full force and effect of law. Given their presumed connection with national security, many of these are classified Top Secret and cannot be revealed even to the elected Congress or the courts. It is by these ‘laws’ that the government prosecuted the Occupy Wall Street protestors and that political dissidents are convicted of ‘terrorism’. In court, the government charges a dissident with breaking a secret law, the content of which cannot be revealed for reasons of national security, and for which crime the evidence also cannot be revealed for the same reason. Every day, individuals are prosecuted and foreign policy initiatives taken, none of which can be disclosed. If this isn’t a fascist police state, what would be?

没有权力集中，任何警察国家都无法运作。这在监视和间谍活动领域尤其重要，同时还有可靠和无情的准军事和警察来控制平民行为和政治纠纷。几十年来，权力越来越集中在白宫，这并非没有道理，我们看到立法变化创造了巨大的国土安全机构，以及非法建立广泛的国内监控网络，也不是偶然。历届美国总统不仅承担了不完全属于他们的权力，而且越来越多地利用了所谓的总统指令，这些指令是在国家安全委员会建议的幌子下制定的一人行政命令，具有法律的全部效力。鉴于它们被认为与国家安全有关，其中许多被列为绝密，甚至不能向当选的国会或法院透露。正是通过这些法律，政府起诉了占领华尔街的抗议者，持不同政见者被判犯有恐怖主义罪。在法庭上，政府指控持不同政见者违反了一项秘密法，出于国家安全的原因，该法的内容不能透露，出于同样的原因，也不能透露该罪行的证据。每天都有个人被起诉，外交政策举措被采取，但这些都不能透露。如果这不是法西斯警察国家，那会是什么？

Media control is an essential and integral part of a functioning police state, centralisation being necessary to distribute propaganda and censor information and to help maintain and manipulate the climate of fear which permits the reduction of civil liberties. It is therefore not an accident that US legislative changes permitting corporate concentration have especially included the mass media. This control of public opinion has steadily increased and become more powerful over the years through media concentration. The US government has increasingly responded to intense lobbying and finally permitted media monopolies and oligopolies to emerge, resulting in the extreme centralisation and control of content and ideology we see today.

媒体控制是一个正常运作的警察国家的重要组成部分，中央集权对于分发宣传和审查信息以及帮助维持和操纵允许减少公民自由的恐惧气氛是必要的。因此，美国允许公司集中的立法变化特别包括大众媒体，这并非偶然。多年来，通过媒体集中，这种对舆论的控制稳步增加，变得更加强大。美国政府对激烈的游说反应越来越强烈，最终允许媒体垄断和寡头垄断出现，导致我们今天看到的内容和意识形态的极端集中和控制。

In November of 2014, Dave Lindorff wrote an article titled “Metastasizing of the Police State of America“, which he opened by stating “One can no longer speak in terms of the US as a country that is moving towards becoming a police state. We are living in a police state”. He noted that “at least 40 agencies of the US government from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Supreme Court are using undercover agents to spy on … citizens”, and says the US has “passed the tipping point” of being a police state. He noted too that, according to a New York Times report, “even NASA and the Smithsonian Institution have undercover operatives. Undercover cops and agents are assuming the identities of teachers, doctors, journalists and even priests”. Lindorff wrote, “This information has to be put together with the rampant militarization of local police forces, who have become an occupying army, and with the proliferation of spying activities by state and local police agencies, encouraged by the establishment by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security of myriad “Joint Anti-Terrorism Strike Forces, and of 76 so-called Fusion Centers.“

2014年11月，Dave Lindorff写了一篇题为“美国警察国家的转移”的文章，他在文章开头说：“作为一个正在走向警察国家的国家，人们不能再谈论美国。我们生活在一个警察国家”。他指出，“从卫生和公共服务部到最高法院，美国政府至少有40个机构正在使用卧底特工监视……公民”，并表示美国已经“超过了警察国家的临界点”。他还指出，根据《纽约时报》的一篇报道，“即使是美国国家航空航天局和史密森学会也有卧底特工。卧底警察和特工正在冒充教师、医生、记者甚至牧师的身份”。Lindorff写道：“这些信息必须与当地警察部队的猖獗军事化（他们已经成为占领军）以及州和地方警察机构的间谍活动激增相结合，这是联邦调查局和国土安全部建立无数“联合反恐打击部队和76个所谓的融合中心”所鼓励的。”

Lindorff said he used to scoff at what he saw as wild claims that Americans were living in a police state, but that he’s changed his mind, and that Americans are totally ignorant of the fact that they are being constantly watched and subject to arbitrary arrest, that they discover the truth only when they cross a line. In discussing the freedom of Americans to criticize and protest against the ruling elites, he wrote that while they may feel free to act, Americans must note “the terrible lengths to which this government is going to repress political activists. The list of people being hounded and persecuted by the US police state is far too long to publish. Suffice to say if police repression can happen to the people on that list, it can happen to all of us.” And that says it all.

林多夫说，他过去常常嘲笑他所认为的美国人生活在一个警察国家的疯狂说法，但他改变了主意，美国人完全不知道他们一直在被监视和任意逮捕，他们只有在越界时才发现真相。在讨论美国人批评和抗议统治精英的自由时，他写道，虽然他们可以自由地采取行动，但美国人必须注意“这个政府将镇压政治活动家的可怕程度。被美国警察国家追捕和迫害的人的名单太长了，无法公布。只需说，如果警察镇压可能发生在名单上的人身上，也可能发生在我们所有人身上。”这就说明了一切。

*

Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).

罗曼诺夫先生的作品已被翻译成32种语言，他的文章在30多个国家的150多个外语新闻和政治网站以及100多个英语平台上发布。拉里·罗曼诺夫是一名退休的管理顾问和商人。他曾在国际咨询公司担任高级管理职位，并拥有国际进出口业务。他曾是上海复旦大学的客座教授，为高级EMBA课程提供国际事务案例研究。罗曼诺夫先生现居上海，目前正在撰写十本与中国和西方有关的书。他是辛西娅·麦金尼的新文集《当中国打喷嚏》的撰稿人之一。(第2章——与恶魔打交道)。

His full archive can be seen at

他的全部文章库可以在以下找到

https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ and https://www.moonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at:

他的联系方式是

2186604556@qq.com

*

This article may contain copyrighted material, the use of which has not been specifically authorised by the copyright owner. This content is being made available under the Fair Use doctrine, and is for educational and information purposes only. There is no commercial use of this content.

本作者的其他作品 — Other works by this Author

王位背后的权力

The Power Behind the Throne

我们没有被告知的内容 (美国战俘营 + 中情局 MK-ULTRA 项目)

WHATWE ARE NOT TOLD (Prisoner of War Camps in America + CIA Project MK-ULTRA)

HASBARA— 犹太哈斯巴拉的荣耀

The Jewish Hasbara in All its Glory

建立在谎言上的国家–第一卷–美国如何变得富有

Essays on China Volume One

关于中国的论文

ESSAYS ON CHINA Volume Two

关于中国的论文 — 第三卷

ESSAYS ON CHINA Volume Three

生物战在行动

民主，最危险的宗教

建立在谎言上的国家–第一卷–美国如何变得富有 NATIONS BUILT ON LIES — VOLUME 1 — How the US Became Rich

美国随笔

美国警察国家》第一卷免费电子书

宣传与媒体

PROPAGANDA and THE MEDIA

BOOKS IN ENGLISH

NATIONS BUILT ON LIES — VOLUME 2 — Life in a Failed State

NATIONS BUILT ON LIES — VOLUME 3 — The Branding of America

BERNAYS AND PROPAGANDA

Kamila Valieva

https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/

HUA BIN — Rare earth and “reindustrialization” — Manufacturing is far harder than people realize

Luisa Vasconcellos

-

May 14, 2025

0

Rare earth and “reindustrialization”

Manufacturing is far harder than people realize

Hua Bin

May 14, 2025

Share

The New York Times is not usually mentioned in the same breath with Mining Journal or the Northern Miner, the leading lights for the mining industry.

But between April 14 and 17, NYT ran 5 stories with titles below –

– China halts critical minerals as trade war intensifies (April 14)

– What are rare earth metals, the export halted by China (April 15)

– How China took over the world’s rare earth industry (April 16)

– The mine is America’s, the minerals are China’s (April 16)

– Here is what to know about rare earth minerals and renewable energy (April 17)

In April, NYT also published these titles:

– Elon Musk warns rare earth magnet shortage may delay Tesla’s robots

– US announces deal to share Ukraine’s mineral wealth

– Not just rare earth: US gets many critical minerals from China

– China’s halt of critical minerals poses risk for US military programs

Readers may be forgiven for thinking NYT is entering the arena normally reserved for mining.com.

Tellingly, since April 2 “liberation day”, the New York Times has run more articles on rare earth metals than China’s potential dumping of US Treasuries.

Credit to NYT, it hasn’t focused “2 toys instead of 30” kind of frivolous theatrics from the tariff war. The true trump card China played is the rare earth ban to the US. In short, US buyers will not be able to get rare earth minerals from China even if they are willing to pay the 145% (or whatever the number is on any given day) “reciprocal” tariff. China is going after the jugular with this move.

The New York Times realizes rare earth minerals’ central importance to US high-tech manufacturing and military production (we’ll dive into this later). Clearly, now that China has cut off US access to rare earth, building this industry is far more important to the US economic and national security than assembling iPhones in the US – a fact that naturally escapes financial geniuses like Miran, Navarro, Bessent and Lutnick.

In fact, this should be a top priority and test bed for reindustrializing the US if the Trump regime is serious. For example, without rare earth, the much touted US 6^th generation fighter program F-47 will be dead in the water.

Can the US turn the dream of reindustrialization into reality in the critical rare earth industry to reduce dependency on China? What would such a test case tell us about its prospects to become a manufacturing powerhouse again? Let’s dive in.

Rare earths are silvery-grey metals. There are 17 of them, ranging from lanthanum (atomic number 57) to lutetium (atomic number 73), and most of them are in their own row in the periodic table because of their unusual atomic structure.

By the way, President Trump, the periodic table is not to be confused with ladies’ monthly cycles (“blood coming out of her wherever”).

Their arrangement of electrons can give them remarkable properties such as luminescence—used for the screens of smartphones—and magnetism. They are often added to other metals in small amounts to enhance their performance; magnets with rare earths can be 15 times as powerful as those without them.

Despite their name, rare earth elements (REE) aren’t particularly rare—they’re just difficult to extract. This group of 17 elements can be found on earth’s crust in many place around the world.

What’s special about REE is their unique properties that make them essential in high tech production. Here is an incomplete list of products that need REE to make –

– Smartphone

– Semiconductor

– Aircraft engine

– Electric vehicle

– Wind turbine

– Robotics

– Fibre optic cable

– Guided missile

– High frequency radar

– Avionics and flight control systems

– Thermal barrier coatings, sensors and optics

– Drone and rocket

– Infrared night vision goggle

– Precision laser

– Armor piercing tank shell

The rare earth industry happens to be one that China dominates –

– Reserve advantage: China holds the biggest share of global REE reserve at 37%, roughly 44 million tons

– Mining dominance: China accounted for 168,000 tons out of 240,000 global production, representing 70% of total REE mining

– Processing and refining monopoly: China dominates roughly 90% global REE processing, turning raw ores into usable oxides, metals and magnets. For heavy rare earth such as terbium, ytterbium and yttrium, China’s dominance is absolute at 100%. Heavy REEs (HREEs) are especially important in high tech and military applications (e.g. jet engine coating).

– Production concentration: 6 state owned companies control 90% of the REE industry in China such as China Norther Rare Earth and Shenghe Resources. Refining facilities are concentrated in 2 provinces – Inner Mongolia and Jiangxi in southern China.

– Dominance in every part of the supply chain: China’s rare earth strength extends from mines, extraction, separation, to processing and production of final product such as magnets. China owns proprietary mining, separation and processing technologies and develops most of the specialized chemicals, machinery, tooling, and equipment. China has by far the largest pool of REE scientists, engineers, and technicians in the world

– Control over global supply chain: as mentioned, rare earth elements are found in many places, including Vietnam, Australia, Myanmar, and the US. But even non-Chinese mines send ores to China for processing for technical know-how and processing facilities. For example, the Mountain Pass mine in California used to send most of its ores to China for processing before the tariff war

– Cost and quality competitiveness: due to the large scale of REE production and processing in China as well as its control over key technologies, Chinese producers are the most competitive in cost and quality. Chinese producers dictate REE price in the global market (which actually is quite small, compared with more commonly used minerals such as lithium, nickel, or copper, given the niche nature of the product)

The US military relies on Chinese REE to produce much of its arsenal

According to a recent CSIS report, REEs are crucial for a range of defence technologies, including F-35 fighter jets, Virginia- and Columbia-class submarines, Tomahawk missiles, radar systems, Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, and the Joint Direct Attack Munition series of smart bombs.

For example, the F-35 fighter jet contains over 900 pounds of REEs. An Arleigh Burke-class DDG-51 destroyer requires approximately 5,200 pounds, while a Virginia-class submarine uses around 9,200 pounds.

CSIS report gave examples such as how US fighter jets depend on China-sourced REE in the form of magnets and stealth coating, engine coating. For example, yttrium is required for high temperature jet engine coatings; such thermal barrier coatings on turbine blades stop aircraft engines from melting mid-flight.

Back in 2022, the Pentagon temporarily suspended deliveries of F-35 jets after Lockheed acknowledged an alloy made in China was in a component of the jet, violating federal defence acquisition rules. But it had to exempt Lockheed and resume delivery because no replacement could be found. Pentagon ended up violating US laws in order to build weapons to fight China with parts sourced from China.

CSIS pointed out this is akin to buy bullets from your enemy to fight the same enemy.

On the other side, most Chinese have come to think the Chinese companies selling such minerals to US military industrial complex need to be tried for treason. But that’s another story.

According to Govini, a defence acquisition information firm, China’s tightening export controls on critical minerals could hit more than three-quarters of the US weapons supply chain.

In a report titled From rock to rocket: critical minerals and the trade war for national security (a short 11-page document readily available online), Govini identified 80,000 weapons parts that were made using antimony, gallium, germanium, tungsten or tellurium – the global supply of which are all dominated by China – “meaning nearly 78 per cent of all [Pentagon] weapon systems are potentially affected”.

“China’s recent export bans and restrictions on critical minerals have exposed an open secret: despite political rhetoric, the US is fundamentally dependent on China for essential components of its weapon systems.”

These materials are critical in manufacturing military equipment across all services – from 61.7 per cent of the Marine Corps’ weapons to 91.6 per cent of the Navy’s. In the past 15 years, the use of the five minerals in US weapons has increased by an average of 23.2 per cent per year, according to the report.

Some of the key components named in the report included the use of antimony in the infrared focal plane arrays of the F-35’s missile warning system; gallium in advanced AN/SPY-6 radars; germanium in nuclear detection systems and the Javelin missile’s infrared optics; tungsten in armour-piercing tank shells and tellurium in the thermoelectric generators on RQ-21 Blackjack drones.

The report examined the whole production process of 1,900 weapons systems and found China was involved in the bulk of the supply chains, ranging from 82.4 per cent in the case of germanium to 91.2 per cent for tellurium.

It said only 19 per cent of the antimony needed for US weapon systems was available outside China.

“This heavy reliance on Chinese-refined antimony not only exposes critical defence supply chains to potential political and economic leverage, but may also drive up costs and delay production timelines for US military platforms,” the report added.

Here is a breakdown of US weapon systems dependent on just 3 China-dominated REEs (antimony, gallium, and germanium) –

DoD Parts Requiring:

Antimony: 6,335

Gallium: 11,351

Germanium: 12,777

‍

Weapons Systems Impacted:

Navy: 501

Army: 267

Air Force: 193

Marines: 113

Coast Guard: 1

‍

There are 12,486 supply chains that support the production of the 1,000+ weapons systems made with antimony, gallium, and/or germanium. 87% of those supply chains (10,829) rely on a Chinese supplier at some point.

‍‍

A graph of a number of minerals AI-generated content may be incorrect.

‍

The report said, “the loop is closing. Even antimony mined in Australia becomes unusable for U.S. systems as it has to be refined in China. The result: 88% of DoD’s critical mineral supply chains are exposed to Chinese influence.”

“America’s dependence on China for critical minerals represents a glaring and growing strategic vulnerability.” Unless addressed, that vulnerability may soon define the limits of U.S. deterrence – not in dollars or troop strength, but in elemental scarcity.

Since the report’s publishing, Beijing’s export bans have expanded to include tungsten and tellurium. Most recently, Beijing put additional 7 HREEs under export control including samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium.

Can the US build a rare earth industry? What would this test case say about its prospect to revive manufacturing?

As discussed, rare earth metals can be found in many places. The key is the ability to extract and process them. There is no heavy rare earths separation and processing in the United States at present.

MP Materials, the only US rare earth mine, can produce at full scale (current plus planned) what China produces in one day, according to the New York Times.

Clearly this is an industry the US needs to build. For the US to do so, it needs to go through a number of steps –

– Prospect mine deposits (including the phantom mines said to be in Ukraine or Greenland)

– Permitting process and environmental assessments as rare earth production is high environment-impact, a process that could take many years under current regulations

– Develop the extraction, separation, and processing technologies such as chemical leaching of REE ores and solvent extraction

– Build the specialized tools, chemicals, machinery, and equipment

– Build the processing plants and facilities with related infrastructure

– Develop a skilled engineering work force

Much like the semiconductor supply chain where ASML and TSMC dominate the tooling and production process, China owns most of the proprietary technologies, equipment, and processes in REE industry. REE sits on the upstream of semiconductor production as a key input.

As a reciprocal move for the chip ban the US has put on China, China has imposed the same restrictions on the flow of rare earth related technologies and machinery to the US.

In December 2023, China imposed a ban of REE extraction and separation technologies. It had a notable impact on developing REE supply chain capabilities outside of China as China possesses specialized technical expertise in this field that other countries do not.

For instance, it has an absolute advantage in solvent extraction processing techniques for rare earths, an area where other countries have faced challenges both in implementing advanced technological operations and in addressing environmental concerns.

Beijing has sent a clear message: while the US might attempt to cut China off from the most advanced chips and other cutting-edge technologies, China could go one step further by cutting off the supply chain upstream.

Even if the US can overcome such restrictions and develop its own technologies, the process of building out the factories and facilities will take years, if not decades. Its cost and quality competitiveness with China will remain a wide gap, perhaps in perpetuity.

Meanwhile, the gap between China and the rest of the world in REE mining and refining is getting wider. In March, a new technical breakthrough called electrokinetic mining (EKM), led by Researchers at the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is developed to increase extraction efficiency to 95% while reducing energy use by 60%, reducing leaching agent by 80% and extraction time by 70%.

Importantly, according to CSIS, there are dozens of universities and technical schools in China that offer majors in REE mining, extraction and processing. The human capital pool for REE in China is enormous. In contrast, there is not a single university major in the US that offers technical training in REE mining and processing.

To summarize, it’s unlikely the US can build a rare earth industry that can meet its high tech and military needs and compete with China in the next decade. It cannot afford to disrupt global supply chains without jeopardizing its own economic and technological ambitions.

Reindustrializing the US may seem simple to New York real estate developer or Wall Street financiers. The cold reality is they have no clue how industry actually works.

In fact, most Americans have become disconnected from manufacturing. They don’t really understand what modern manufacturing requires. The ambition to restore American industry is real, but the tools Trump leans on are rooted in economics and finance (very bad economics and finance at that), not industry.

If the U.S. truly wants to bring manufacturing back, it needs to rebuild the entire ecosystem to support it. This isn’t about fixing a single sector, adjusting a policy direction, or ramping up a specific capability, let alone just raising tariffs.

It would first need to build new factories, purchase equipment, train workers, build supporting infrastructure, and develop manufacturing processes. That alone would take years and generate little to no output at the start. The upfront investment could easily run into many billions and all of it would be built into the final cost. And this is assuming they have the know-how to do it.

Reshoring manufacturing is a long, painful journey. It requires consensus across society—from government, education institutions, to industrial policy and infrastructure. It means rebuilding capability across the board. This isn’t a 4-year term project. It’s a 20 or 30-year commitment.

China has gone through its industrialization over the past 40+ years with thorough and persistent government planning and commitment. And even with that, the results zig and zag depending on industry. The same simply won’t happen in the US political system today.

As I wrote before, China’s rise as global factory is not by accident but meticulous industrial planning. Take Made in China 2025 (MIC25) as an example – it took a decade long focus of investment and execution to achieve quantified tangible targets set for 10 industries with 260+ specific metrics. https://huabinoliver.substack.com/p/revisiting-made-in-china-2025-mic25

To be blunt, that level of state capacity for large scale long term planning doesn’t exist outside of China.

After losing to China in free market capitalism, Trump (and Biden before him) has turned to state planning to compete with China. Chips Act, Inflation Reduction Act, or Stargate, they may sport fancy marketing slogans but I doubt they have any staying power. Trump already has deconstructed much of what Biden put together.

China’s rare earth dominance is a great example. China has achieved the pole position because it has planned decades ago to control the most critical parts of the supply chain for high end manufacturing such as EV, wind turbines, smart phones, chips, and military hardware.

China can do this because its national and local leaders are mostly engineers by training who understand the importance of such bolts and nuts matters like rare earth, the refining/processing technologies, and their importance to industries of the future.

Each of the past three leaders in China had an engineering degree – Jiang Zemin with Mechanical Engineering degree from Shanghai Jiaotong University, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping with Hydro Engineering and Chemical Engineering degrees from Tsinghua University.

You simply cannot expect politicians trained as lawyer or financiers, who don’t even know what a periodic table is, to have the ability to make such decisions.

Let’s be honest – making stuff is much harder than stock speculation or running a printing press for little green pieces of paper with dead presidents’ portraits.

Trump’s Ukraine mineral deal and wished-for annexation of Greenland are both pursued with the hope to obtain rare earth deposits, which are not proven by any means. Even if Trump gets his mineral deals with Ukraine, annex Greenland, and have all the access to rare earth deposits, none of the above issues regarding technology, talents, and scale are solved.

The rare earth case also illustrates the fundamental difference between long term and short term planning between Chinese and US businesses. US businesses are short-term, profit driven while state-owned Chinese businesses are long-term goal-driven.

For industries such as rare earth which demands a long investment horizon, years and decades of development, US businesses are inherently more likely to cede ground to China.

The rare earth case shows the US is unlikely able to reindustrialize in a most critical industry, where it is dependent on China. What would happen when it goes to war with an opponent from which it has to source the critical raw material for its war machine?

The US is planning to go to war with China, which is not only its banker (the largest creditor) but also, in a perverse way, its ultimate arms dealer.

What happens when the money and the arms stop? The Trump regime can happily consult that with Vladimir “no cards” Zelensky…

Source

Hua Bin: A creative proposal to balance China US trade

Uncategorized

Luisa Vasconcellos

-

May 1, 2025

0

Hua Bin: A creative proposal to balance China US trade

A creative proposal to balance China US trade Hua Bin Apr 24, 2025

Classical loft and modern city skyline in China Chongqing

Regardless what we think of Trump’s tariff war, the trade imbalance between China and the US is indeed substantial and unsustainable in the long term.

In typical Trump fashion, when he talks about trade, he chooses to cherry pick and talk only about the merchandise trade where the US runs a trillion dollar trade deficit with nearly all major economies.

He conveniently neglects to mention the equally massive service trade SURPLUS the US runs with the rest of the world, including China. This includes digital trade, intellectual property rights, financial services, business services, media and entertainment, tourism, education, and more.

Of course, it is easier to paint the US as a “victim” of global trade if the focus is solely on merchandise trade. The case against global trade gets diluted, even entirely negated, when one looks at the full spectrum of trade and how the US benefits disproportionately from the service trade and runs the world’s largest service trade surplus. But fairness is never the goal here.

The intellectual dishonesty is not limited to the skewered view of trade but also extends to the avoidance of a deeper discussion of the structural reason behind US merchandise trade deficit.

As is well known, the US has been deindustrializing since 1950s as its manufacturing job peaked in late 40s (37% of total employment) and the economy started to move towards a consumption and service based economy.

By 1971, less than 25% of US employment was in manufacturing. By 2000, it fell to 13% and today manufacturing employment hovers around 9% (more or less so for a decade).

Although NAFTA (1994) and China’s entry into WTO (2001) are regularly invoked as key events driving deindustrialization, the US manufacturing employment and GDP contribution has been on a smooth downward trend since 1945. By the time China ramped up manufacturing in mid 2000s, deindustrialization was completed and the US was already a service-based economy. You can refer to the many books on the subject published before 2010. A short list here –

– America’s Rustbelt: The Economic and Social Effects of Deindustrialization (1987)

– Beyond Rust: Metropolitan Pittsburgh and the Fate of Industrial America (1989)

– The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market (2003)

– The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans (2005)

– The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis (2007)

There are many reasons behind the deindustrialization of the US economy –

– Finance, tech, and healthcare have risen. The FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate) is an ever bigger part of the economy; tech sector has boomed; and healthcare industry has ballooned (now accounting for 18% total GDP). Together with retail, media, entertainment, business services, education, the US economy has moved away from production to become a consumption and service based economy, i.e. the New Economy.

– High costs in the US have made manufacturing uncompetitive. The financialization of the economy has driven costs of factors of production to such a high level that makes local manufacturing simply not competitive.

This includes high labor costs (necessary to cover the overhead costs of healthcare, housing, education, etc.), high regulatory costs, high land costs, essentially all critical input costs.

At this point, the US simply cannot produce competitive goods and merchandise even for the highly paid American workers to buy, let alone export to foreign countries. Note that the US has the highest GDP per capita among major developed economies and enjoys much higher income. If the Americans cannot afford to buy local, how can consumers in Vietnam or Cambodia or even Portugal afford such?

– Technology and automation is another big factor behind the loss of manufacturing jobs in the US. Although redistribution of factory jobs to lower cost countries is often cited as the victimization of American workers, studies have shown more job losses are attributed to improved productivity and automation than offshoring.

Trump has identified deindustrialization and loss of manufacturing jobs as a national emergency. But he fails to understand the deeper underlying reasons and therefore is destined to come up with the wrong solutions.

Simply put, tariff will not make US manufacturing competitive. The inherent high cost of producing in the US means few low income foreigners can afford US manufactured goods even if the country has the production capacity and can export at zero tariff.

The world won’t buy from the US and balance its merchandise trade deficit even if it wants to.

The flip side is the US is very competitive in the services industry and therefore runs a large surplus there.

Global economy works on market-based principles, not the whim of a low intelligence reality show personality.

That said, for entertainment, let me hypothesize a few ways the US can balance its merchandise trade with China. Though unlikely to ever transpire, they are more grounded to economic reality than Trump’s fantasy.

– China can stop exporting goods made by US companies in China. Between 30 to 40% Chinese exports to the US are by US companies like Apple, Tesla, GM, Pfizer, Dow Chemical. These companies manufacture in China to sell to the Chinese market and they also export to their home market and other countries, taking advantage of the lower production costs, superior supply chains and infrastructure in China.

– China can stop the export of goods made by European, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese companies in China to the US. This accounts for another 30% of US-bound Chinese exports. This would affect companies such as VW, IKEA, Toyota, Panasonic, SK Hynix, Samsung, TSMC, etc.

– China can stop all export of critical minerals to the US, including rare earth, cobalt, lithium, aluminum, copper. China can also stop the export of batteries, solar panels, drones, legacy semiconductor chips, mining and processing equipment, tooling machines, etc.

– China will mainly focus to export toys, apparel, shoes, furniture, luggage, plastics, home electronics, Christmas decors, etc. for Walmart and Amazon.

– China can increase US imports such as F-35 fighter jets, Patriot missiles, Virginia class submarines, M1-A1 tanks, bunker buster bombs, depleted uranium munitions, etc. After all, the US is the world leader in arms manufacturing and has an unassailable competitive advantage in this field. It should be open to sell to China to balance its trade deficit.

– China can import more Nvidia chips, Palantir surveillance software, SpaceX communication satellites, another field the US has market-competitive offerings.

– China can import more corn, beef, chicken, soybean from the US peasants – of course, eggs are off limit. The US needs them…

The optics may be bad for the American peasants to sell agricultural goods to the Chinese peasants who make manufactured stuff and lend money to the US government. But optics be damned since we are trying to balance the trade deficit.

EN — LARRY ROMANOFF: Debunking Elon Musk – Part 1 — Building a Legend, One Lie at a Time

POLITICS

Luisa Vasconcellos

-

May 1, 2025

0

Debunking Elon Musk – Part 1

Building a Legend, One Lie at a Time

By Larry Romanoff

Elon Musk motivates Tesla employees. Source

CHINESE ENGLISH ESTONIAN ROMANIAN

FREE PDF

Contents

E = mc²

The Media Flood

Smoking up the Room

Elon Musk’s Educational Background

The CEO of Everything

Elon Musk, The “Influencer”

A Dog’s Tale

E = mc²

When you see this equation, what first comes to your mind? If you’re like most people, you will think of Albert Einstein who has for the last 75 years been linked with the creation of this equation. But that was all a lie. The famous equation relating mass, energy, and the speed of light, had been published by Italian physicist Olinto De Pretto long before Einstein was suddenly given credit for it. Prominent scientists have stated unanimously many times that there is “absolutely nothing to connect Einstein to the derivation of this formula.” [1] I covered this in detail in an article titled “A Few Historical Frauds“. It’s worth reading. [2]

The accusations at the time about Einstein being a thief and plagiarist were so widespread that a special hearing was to be conducted in the archive where David Hilbert’s famous relativity equations resided in their original certified form. Einstein’s subsequent plagiarized publishing of these equations was to be compared to Hilbert’s original. But Einstein supporters broke into the archive during the night and, using a razor, cut out nearly a page of Hilbert’s monograph containing those precise equations. [2a][2b] Naturally, no comparison could be made. Einstein’s personal history is filled with such fraudulent events.

The truth is that Albert Einstein was neither a prominent physicist nor a competent mathematician, and never contributed anything original to either field. Einstein was a plagiarist who simply copied the discoveries of other physicists and took credit for them. It is not a secret in physics today that Albert Einstein was 100% a fraud, even though few want to risk their reputations by revealing the obvious.

Einstein was a Jew, and the Jews decided to promote one of their own to the pinnacle of interstellar stardom by filling all the media for the past 75 years about the “scientific greatness” of an incompetent plagiarist. To say they were successful would be quite an understatement. The simple fact is that if we read the same thing thousands of times in hundreds of sources over many decades, almost everyone will believe it to be true. Since the Jews control the media,opposing voices seldom have the microphone,and the truth is lost from history and from public consciousness.

I mention this because the same kind of legend is being created today about Elon Musk, by the same people using similar methods, and for similar reasons. Probably 95% of everything you know about this man, is false. The thousands of pieces of media exposure relating to Elon Musk are all part of a carefully-planned agenda designed to create a mythical legend that is entirely fabricated nonsense. We have headlines like “Tesla under Elon Musk made the first best electric car”. [3] That is completely false; an outright lie. The Washington Post claims in a headline, “Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla” [4], another complete falsehood. More on Tesla in a later Part of this series.

There are literally hundreds of claims that have been made about Elon Musk, none with any supporting evidence, but all meant to attribute genius and super-human abilities to an undistinguished con-man. Musk is given totally undeserved credit for ideas or inventions that have been around for hundreds of years in some cases. As one example, “Elon Musk’s” hyperloop train, in its various forms, has been around for at least 200 years. As another, “Musk’s Neuralink” was accomplished in China more than ten years prior, Chinese engineers totally controlling all aspects of a car’s operations with their minds – and no chip implantation necessary.

The Media Flood

As I noted in detail in my E-book “Propaganda and the Media” [5], one sure way to know that we are being subjected to an orchestrated propaganda “image-building” campaign is when all the mass media are suddenly on the same page, giving us seemingly unlimited numbers of articles that all share the same agenda. Today, no opportunity is missed to mention Elon Musk and connect him to something praiseworthy if not grandiose.

Jim Farley is the President of the Ford Motor Company. If Ford launches a new model, the headlines read “Ford launches a new model”, not “Jim Farley launches a new model”. The company is not the man. But attentive readers should have noticed that the media slant is entirely different for Elon Musk. The headline reads “Elon Musk launches SpaceX’s satellite”. [6] The company (SpaceX) has disappeared from view and now apparently consists of only one individual (Elon Musk) who – personally – launched a satellite. The Israel National News promotes one of their favorite sons by headlining, “Elon Musk’s pictures of the solar eclipse from space”. [7] So, we are to believe Elon Musk was wandering around in space with his Leica camera, taking photos of solar eclipses? What nonsense.

But this programmed glorification of Musk is a one-way street. When his giant new rocket exploded shortly after lift-off (again), the headlines told us “SpaceX rocket explodes minutes after launch” [8]. Why wasn’t it “Elon Musk’s rocket explodes minutes after launch”? Because you cannot fabricate a false legend with negatives. When Tesla had to cancel the spectacular inauguration event for its famed (and flawed) Robotaxi, the headlines told us “Tesla delays Robotaxi event” [9], not “Elon Musk delays event”. The bad news about Tesla, SpaceX, et al, belongs to the company, while the good news is all attributed to Elon Musk.

Smoking up the Room

One of the basic strategies of the Jewish Hasbara (misinformation / propaganda) system is to sow confusion whenever a sensitive topic might attract attention unfavorable to the Jews. The standard method is to publish as many contradictory facts, opinions, and positions as possible, on a topic. Truth is not relevant here, nor are sensibility or even plausibility. The process is simply to grab any threads, invisible or not, and weave as thick a carpet as one can. Eventually, readers throw up their hands in confusion and frustration, dismissing the topic as impossible to understand, and abandon further examination or discussion. And, of course, that is the purpose – to dissuade the public from close examination of topics the Jews don’t want closely examined. We see this everywhere, on most topics of geo-political importance, and we see it here in spades on topics related to Elon Musk.

These topics include Musk’s level of intelligence (or, more appropriately, the lack thereof), his educational background, whether or not Musk is a Jew, his roles (or lack thereof) in Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink, OpenAI and Neuralink, the Hyperloop, and much else.

We have a multitude of claims presented as true, claims that flatly contradict each other. Elon Musk “founded” Tesla, but he didn’t. Elon Musk designed the Tesla car, but he didn’t. Elon Musk “owns” Tesla and is the CEO of Tesla, except that he doesn’t and he isn’t. The man dropped out of a Ph.D. program, except that he was never enrolled in one. Musk founded OpenAI, except that he didn’t. The list is very long. The only three items on which there appear to be universal agreement about Elon Musk are that:(1) he is a sociopathic bully, (2) he is both delusional and a liar, and (3) his primary “activity” at SpaceX and Tesla is wandering the halls to solicit sex from the female staff. These are all well-documented and will be discussed in later articles in this series.

Elon Musk’s Educational Background

Questionable at best, from what we can find in the record. Musk seems to have attended a Canadian university for perhaps a year, but the educational thread unravels after that. There is evidence he attended some classes at the University of Pennsylvania, but no evidence he was ever a full-time student. Musk claims to have a degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a degree in Economics from their Wharton School. Both claims appear to have serious problems.

One website tells us that after a brief stint at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, “[Musk] in 1992 transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he received bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics in 1997. He enrolled in graduate school in physics at Stanford University in California, but he left after only two days…” [10] None of this appears to be true as stated, and those making the claims lack the credentials to do so.

Another website tells us, “[Musk] transferred to the University of Pennsylvania after two years of Canadian education. At U Penn, he completed two bachelor’s degrees simultaneously: Physics from the College of Arts and Sciences and Economics from the Wharton School. Despite receiving an acceptance to Stanford University’s Materials Science PhD program in 1995, Musk made a bold decision to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. Two days after starting the PhD program, he left the doctorate to join the internet revolution, although his application to Netscape went unanswered.” [11] And the author of these startling confirmations? A man who presents as his autobiography the following: “Hello! I’m Garfield Conner. I’m an avid reader, continually expanding my horizons through diverse literature. I’m excited to contribute my insights on academic topics.”

Readers should note the nonsense in the above reference: In 1995, Musk had no degrees, and only possibly a few classes to his credit, and was never accepted into a Ph.D. program anywhere. Another nonsense item is that Musk apparently threw away his Ph.D. studies “after only two days” because he wanted “to join the internet revolution”. And how would he do this? Well, by applying for a job with Netscape, which was the first good Internet browser and search engine. The fact that Netscape didn’t even bother to reply to his job application letter, apparently didn’t deter this genius from throwing away a (non-existent) Ph.D. program.

“Musk was sued for misrepresenting his educational and professional background to secure a business opportunity, [and the] documents … raised inconsistencies about [his] educational record. Elon has claimed that he earned a degree in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995. That’s not true.” The “fact-checking” website Snopes weighs in on this to tell us that the University mysteriously dropped the requirements for degrees and thus Musk “technically” qualified for a degree. [12]

Below is a photo of what appears to be an undergraduate economics degree issued by U Penn. Below that is a photo of what appears to be an undergraduate degree certificate (B.A.), but with no discipline stated, and definitely not in physics or any of the sciences. [13] I know of no university that grants general, unspecified undergraduate degrees with no named program or major.

Musk claims, and U Penn appears to concur, that Musk had not completed the requirements for any degree. Indeed, one researcher stated that Elon Musk lied about his credentials, that he did not have a degree in physics or any technical field, and that he did not get into any Ph.D. program. This is very muddy; Musk claims, as do his supporters, that he completed the “double degree” at U Penn in five years, but he transferred to U Penn in late 1992 and by early 1995 he was already busy full-time developing his Zip2 business directory company.

And it quickly becomes muddier when U Penn inexplicably “waived the requirements” necessary for a degree (two degrees, actually), so that passing the required number of classes was no longer necessary. What would have caused such a magical turn of events? Well, the same researcher (as above) claims that “investors quietly arranged a diploma”. [14] We already know that almost anyone can obtain admission to (and graduation from) Harvard University with a payment of $3 to $5 million, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that U Penn would grant (sell) a degree to Elon Musk when an “investor” opened his cheque book.

And then a bit later, U Penn has an “Elon Musk Public Lecture” series which was “made possible through a generous endowment”. The endowment must have been generous indeed: “The Musk lecture brings world-renowned scientists in the areas of particle physics and cosmology to Penn to share their knowledge and vision.” [15]

And after this, everything stinks.Readers should note that this business of “purchase by endowment” is almost entirely a Jewish tradition. There may be a few Gentiles who participate in these frauds, but they are much a minority. These so-called endowments are used to obtain not only admission to – and degrees from – a university, but also naming rights to a hospital, a business school, a University department, lecture series, public buildings, even public parks and streets.

These “endowments” are presented as “a testament to the generosity and deep commitment of Jewish donors”, where “Across North American campuses, some of the most iconic university buildings bear Jewish names”. [16] Yes, and not only in North America, but these are testaments to Jews’ desire to perpetuate their names and appearance of influence, rather than to “generosity”. Columbia University has the Milstein Center; Harvard University has the Belfer Center; U Penn has the Perelman Quadrangle; Northwestern University has the Pritzker School of Law. We have a Sheldon Chumir hospital, a Seymour Schulich School of Business, and on and on and on. And of course, we have the Elon Musk B.A. in Economics and the Elon Musk lecture series on physics. What more could you want?

Back to Elon Musk, the only theory that fits all the known facts, comprises the following:

– Elon Musk lied about his academic credentials

– Musk was never enrolled in any Ph.D. program anywhere.

– The undergraduate degrees he may hold, appear to have been granted without completing the requirements and thus were undeservedly (fraudulently?) obtained

– The mitigating factor in the granting of these degrees, appears to have been money, assisted by pressure, bribery, and greed

This may sound harsh, but it’s where the facts seem to lead us. You can form your own conclusion.

The CEO of Everything

What is a CEO? A corporation’s Chief Executive Officer. This is the man who runs the show, who manages the entire organisation, who directs all the Department heads, who makes most of the important decisions. Typically, the CEO of a railroad has spent his entire working career in that field, gradually progressing in knowledge and judgment to that senior position. There are no examples of a person simultaneously being the CEO of more than one large corporation. The CEO of Boeing is not also the CEO of Ford Motors and Merck Pharmaceuticals. The reasons are obvious: no one has the knowledge or expertise (or human ability) to simultaneously manage several huge companies in such diverse fields. Each position has exclusively different requirements and each is very much a demanding full-time job.

However, this theory seems to hold true for everyone but Elon Musk, who is claimed as “The founder and CEO” of Tesla, of Starlink, of SpaceX, OpenAI, and others, as well as controlling Hyperloop transportation systems, Neuralink mental depravities, and so many other things.

But in real life, Elon Musk is not the CEO of anything. A few years ago, media reports made this very plain: I don’t recall their exact quote, but all said the same thing: “Elon Musk has no management responsibilities in any corporation with which he is associated.” You can’t be plainer than that. This should not be a surprise. Musk has no experience whatever in auto manufacturing, rocket design or space exploration, artificial intelligence, hyperloop transportation, or indeed in anything at all. How could an individual pretend to be the CEO of many companies in whose industries he possesses no useful knowledge or experience?

And in fact, from all the media reports, Musk’s only “activity” in any of those companies (including Tesla) was roaming the halls soliciting the female staff for sex. Yes, that’s really true. More later.

Elon Musk, The “Influencer”

But if Elon Musk isn’t a CEO, then what is he? That is the right question to ask. Elon Musk is an “influencer”. That is his role; it is why he was placed in the positions he holds by the people who actually own and control the companies he supposedly “manages”. Look at the image below. It is a screenshot record of the posts Elon Musk has made on Twitter (ignoring all other social media). Each dot represents one post, tens of thousands in total.

Who has the time to do this? Do we see Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway making thousands of posts on Twitter? Do we see the President of any company doing this? Of course not. The reason is that they are busy. They have full-time jobs that are demanding, and making tens of thousands of posts would itself be a full-time job. But the standard narrative is that Elon Musk is the full-time CEO of so many large corporations and yet is apparently able to spend 24 hours each day making (mostly foolish) posts on the Internet.

Image Source

And this is by no means all of Musk’s “influencing” activity. Yet another “influencing” job that must be nearly full-time is the plethora of Internet videos featuring Elon Musk. There are almost certainly many thousands of YouTube and other videos on the Internet, featuring Elon Musk offering his opinions and fantasies on every subject imaginable. These videos all share the common feature that, with very few exceptions, they are clearly scripted. With Musk’s monologues – of which there are many – he is often obviously reading the content.

Every video with an interviewer is also obviously scripted; the sycophantic interviewer gently poses a scripted question to which Musk offers his scripted response. There are never any challenges to his often-ridiculous statements, no penetrating follow-up questions, but merely an acceptance of the scripted response. None of this is an accident; it is all part of a large agenda meant to register Elon Musk in a viewer’s mind as being an expert on that topic – and there are many hundreds of such topics. This is much more than nothing. Someone, or some group of persons, has spent an enormous amount of time to arrange and script all these videos and interviews. And it wasn’t Elon Musk.

It should be obvious from these two elements alone, to say nothing of his (also) full-time job eviscerating the US Federal civil service, that Elon Musk has no time to be involved in the management of anything, and certainly not companies like SpaceX or Tesla, each of which would be a demanding full-time job.

A Dog’s Tale

A friend of mine once had a Husky dog, the typical workhorse of the far North. This dog was so stupid it was adorable. As a puppy, it was so happy to be called that it would come running at full-speed, and if there happened to be a table leg or a tree in the way, it wouldn’t notice. It would crash head-on into that tree, nearly rendering itself unconscious in the process.That’s Elon Musk.

I am by no means the only person to have noticed this. The Los Angeles Times published a long article titled, “Is Elon Musk a genius or an idiot?”[17] They asked the right question and arrived at the correct answer. One writer penned an article claiming Musk was an 87 IQ (or 97) masquerading as 137, and that’s about right. We are often told that there is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have a theory that there is a similarly fine line between stupidity and insanity, a line which Elon Musk crosses with an alarming frequency, as you will see.

Yet the propaganda machine works non-stop to present Elon Musk as one of the most remarkable geniuses in history. We have articles like “Elon Musk’s IQ and the Nature of Genius”, [18] pretending to be scholarly detached works of philosophy but which are just propaganda nonsense. There are many such articles, nearly all with missing bylines, but all on Jewish-owned websites, building the myth. Most claim Musk’s IQ to be 160. They are all rubbish, with absolutely no evidence to support their fantastic assertions.

In another instance, a deluded sycophant named James Dorn (a Jew) tells us “Elon Musk is basically a real-life Tony Stark, a multibillionaire engineer [who] has achieved things in technology that seem almost fictional.” [19] Dorn continues, as do many others, to tell us that Musk’s IQ is “most likely” around 160, placing him in a list with Stephen Hawking and other great scientists.

But Elon Musk is not an engineer, not a scientist, and there is absolutely NO evidence that Musk has ever actually achieved anything in technology, not even the fictional kind. And who is “James K. Dorn”? According to him, “I am a passionate gamer deeply immersed in the world of video gaming. My journey in gaming is not just about playing; it’s about exploring every facet of the games I love.” Perfect credentials to support the evaluation and testing of intelligence. (If you’re Chinese, this is called sarcasm).

But in fact, we all take multiple IQ tests through high school, university entrance and so on. Show us the test results. Prove to us that Elon Musk really doesn’t have a room-temperature IQ. Not to be done. We can’t destroy our own narrative, so claims suffice as irrefutable evidence, mythically taking on a biblical quality where they become unquestionable. So much rubbish.

This article is part of a series. More Parts to follow.

*

Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 34 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chap. 2 — Dealing with Demons).

His full archive can be seen at

He can be contacted at:

2186604556@qq.com

*

NOTES

[1] The Guardian, November 11, 1999; “Einstein’s E=mc² was Italian’s idea”;

https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/nov/11/rorycarroll

Clark, R. W. [1984], Einstein: The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York. De Pretto, O. [1904], ‘Ipo tesi dell ” et ere nell a vita dell ” universe’, Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Feb.

[2] A Few Historical Frauds — Einstein, Bell & Edison, Coca-Cola and the Wright Brothers

[2a] Einstein Equations and Hilbert Action: What is missing on page 8 of the proofs for Hilbert’s First Communication on the Foundations of Physics? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00407-005-0100-6 [2b] On “Belated Decision in the Hilbert-Einstein Priority Dispute”, published by L. Corry, J. Renn, and J. Stachel, F. Winterberg, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276345765_On_Belated_Decision_in_the_Hilbert-Einstein_Priority_Dispute_published_by_L_Corry_J_Renn_and_J_Stachel

[3] Tesla under Elon Musk made the first best electric car.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/tesla-elon-musk-electric-vehicle-b2496076.html

[4] Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/07/20/musk-blows-up-brawls-bullies-his-followers-love-him-anyway/

[5] Propaganda and the Media

https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/PROPAGANDA-AND-THE-MEDIA.pdf

[6] Elon Musk launches SpaceX’s satellite internet service in Indonesia

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/20/tech/indonesia-elon-musk-starlink-launch-intl-hnk/index.html

[7] Elon Musk’s pictures of the solar eclipse from space

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/388182

[8] SpaceX giant rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

https://apnews.com/article/spacex-starship-launch-elon-musk-d9989401e2e07cdfc9753f352e44f6e2

[9] Tesla delays Robotaxi event

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3270171/tesla-delays-robotaxi-event-blow-musks-autonomy-drive

[10] Elon Musk ~ Biography

https://mbeinstitute.org/ap/author-other/musk/elon-musk-biography-241106-0307.pdf

[11] Did Elon Musk Go To College?

https://www.coursmos.com/elon-musk-college-degree/

[12] Elon Musk Is Often Called a “Genius,” But What College Degrees Does He Actually Hold?

https://www.distractify.com/p/elon-musk-degrees

[13] Does Elon Musk Have an Undergraduate Degree in Physics?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/musk-physics-degree/

[14] Elon Musk Is Often Called a “Genius,” But What College Degrees Does He Actually Hold?

https://www.distractify.com/p/elon-musk-degrees.

[15] Elon Musk Public Lecture

https://particlecosmo.sas.upenn.edu/events/elon-musk-public-lecture

[16] Jewish Names on Buildings, Hate within the Walls

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/jewish-names-on-buildings-hate-within-the-walls/

[17] Is Elon Musk a genius or an idiot?

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-11-07/is-elon-musk-a-genius-or-an-idiot

[18] Elon Musk’s IQ and the Nature of Genius

https://www.artificial-intelligence.blog/ai-news/ai-podcast-on-elon-musks-iq-and-the-nature-of-genius

[19] Just How Smart is Elon Musk? Evaluating His Genius IQ

https://expertbeacon.com/how-smart-is-elon-musk-iq/#google_vignette

*

This article may contain copyrighted material, the use of which has not been specifically authorised by the copyright owner. This content is being made available under the Fair Use doctrine, and is for educational and information purposes only. There is no commercial use of this content.

Other works by this Author

民主，最危险的宗教

建立在谎言上的国家–第一卷–美国如何变得富有 NATIONS BUILT ON LIES — VOLUME 1 — How the US Became Rich — Updated

美国随笔

美国警察国家》第一卷免费电子书

宣传与媒体

PROPAGANDA and THE MEDIA — Updated!

BOOKS IN ENGLISH

NATIONS BUILT ON LIES — VOLUME 2 — Life in a Failed State — Updated

NATIONS BUILT ON LIES — VOLUME 3 — The Branding of America — Updated

BERNAYS AND PROPAGANDA

Kamila Valieva

European Luxury Goods Made in China

EN — LARRY ROMANOFF: European Luxury Goods Made in China

ECONOMY

Jackie Chan

-

April 25, 2025

0

By Larry Romanoff

This essay is in response to the flood of videos suddenly appearing on all the American social media about luxury goods with European brands actually being made in China. The story in these videos is that the Chinese factories send the finished products to Italy or France for a few finishing touches, for affixing the label and logo, doing the packaging, and then returning the items to China (and other countries) carrying labels saying “Made in Italy” or “Made in France”. And usually being sold at astronomical prices.

The stories are true. This is in fact how things are done.

One person posted a video of a Hermes bag, showing the entire factory where the bag was being made, showing all the steps in the process from raw materials to the finished product, and stating that the actual cost of making the bag was US$1,395 while Hermes sold the bag at retail for US$38,000. The man in the video said “Why don’t you just buy it from us for US$2,000?” Many people have done precisely that, and millions of people who have watched these videos are in shock to learn the truth – that Chinese factories manufacture nearly all the very expensive so-called “luxury goods” at very low prices and that consumers are spending 90% of their money for the brand name.

When this news broke, one or two of the large European fashion houses disclaimed it, saying “That’s not true”, but offering no evidence beyond that, while all the others merely went silent. One European brand published a short video which attempted to contradict the claims, but the video showed only a few designers around a table, working on the design of a new product. Several people immediately posted videos demanding that the European fashion houses produce a video showing the actual factory in Europe, with the thousands of Europeans sitting at sewing machines and stitching a handbag, asking to be shown the factory actually producing the entire product. No fashion house replied to that demand. Nor could they.

The fact of these luxury items being fully manufactured in China but then carrying a “Made in Italy” label is of course fraudulent, but international IP laws and trade regulations permit this to be done, and so they do it.

But this is both different than you might imagine, and also worse than you might imagine. I will explain. Several Chinese cities, Shanghai among them, has what is called a “Free-Trade Zone”. This is a bit complicated to explain, but a free trade zone is a kind of diplomatic no-man’s land. It is physically within Mainland China but is treated for customs and foreign trade purposes as if it were a separate sovereign entity. Think of it as a kind of “offshore island” near Shanghai.

These zones were created to facilitate various kinds of foreign trade and to eliminate certain kinds of inconveniences in trade. In practice, a foreign company can ship goods directly into Shanghai’s Free Trade Zone without incurring customs duties of any kind, and can freely ship these items out again without restriction, so long as they do not enter Mainland China when they leave the free-trade zone.

What happens in real life is that many of the foreign luxury brands will have their products made by a factory in Mainland China, then ship them not to Italy or France but to Shanghai’s Free Trade Zone. It is there that they will perform the final touches, affix their logos and tags, and do the packaging. They then ship the goods out of the free-trade zone back into Mainland China, now bearing a tag that says “Made in Italy”. Thus, the entire manufacturing process, including the affixing of the “Made in Italy” tag, is done inside Mainland China. There is no need to send the goods to Europe for the final touches.

There is one more related item that I should include here, and that is the recurrent accusations of China making and selling “counterfeit” and “fake” brand name items. I’m sure some of this does occur, but much less than you might imagine, and the truth of these “counterfeit” accusations is far from chaste. Again, I will explain.

European fashion houses (and most American manufacturers of consumer goods as well) do not have their own factories in China. Instead, they find a Chinese factory to produce their product according to rigid specifications. This is sensible because they avoid the cost of building their own factory, training their own staff, and creating their own supply chains. So far, so good.

But there is a catch. The European brand will ask a factory to produce, for example, 100,000 ladies’ handbags of a particular style. Every factory knows that in volume production there will be a small percentage of items containing flaws. This could be from the original materials, a hand slipping on a sewing machine, or a dozen other causes. And that means that a factory will slightly over-produce because quality control is very high and items containing even the slightest flaws will not be accepted. In this example, the factory might produce 102,500 bags, 2,500 extra, representing a 2.5% rate of flawed items.

But when the production run is completed and the quality inspections have been done, the factory discovers that only 500 handbags contained flaws. What do we do with the extra 2,000 bags? The fashion house will pay for only the 100,000 it ordered, but the factory cannot afford to simply discard the excess production because the cost represents a large part of its profit.

You will have already guessed the answer. The factory sells off this excess production to shops on Taobao, to various wholesalers, and even to street market vendors. I know, because I have followed this process from start to finish and have purchased some of these items from the street markets. These products are not “counterfeit” or “fake” in any sense. They are 100% legitimate brand-name items, representing excess production of the original brand item.

The Xiangyang Road market, an outdoor bazaar famous for cheap brand goods in Shanghai, in 2006.

There was in Shanghai a wonderful huge street market named the Xiangyang market, where so much of this excess production ended up. And the Americans and Europeans never stopped haranguing the Shanghai government about this market because they didn’t want their products being sold at discounted prices. So they created the false stories about all the fake Chinese goods that were destroying international brand names, blah, blah, blah, and they put so much pressure on the Shanghai government that the Xiangyang market was finally shut down. That was a black day for consumers. It should never have happened.

A boutique of the luxury brand Gucci (PPR group) in Shanghai. Gucci generates 18% of its sales in China. See Here and Here

I am pleased to see the truth of this luxury-goods manufacturing escaping confinement. Consumers truly are being taken advantage of in so many ways, most especially in paying a markup of tens of thousands of percent for the privilege and cachet of having a “brand name” product. It is all a fraud. And this is especially comforting because these same companies have for decades slandered China as capable of making only cheap junk, while hiding the real truth from consumers and the general public.

*

Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 34 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chap. 2 — Dealing with Demons).

His full archive can be seen at

https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com

*

This article may contain copyrighted material, the use of which has not been specifically authorised by the copyright owner. This content is being made available under the Fair Use doctrine, and is for educational and information purposes only. There is no commercial use of this content.

Other Works by this Author

NATIONS BUILT ON LIES — VOLUME 1 — How the US Became Rich — Updated

PROPAGANDA and THE MEDIA — Updated!

NATIONS BUILT ON LIES — VOLUME 2 — Life in a Failed State — Updated

NATIONS BUILT ON LIES — VOLUME 3 — The Branding of America— Updated

BERNAYS AND PROPAGANDA

Kamila Valieva