We will end this week's discussion about public policy tied to citizens' voice and space and our duty as 99% WE THE PEOPLE to hold accountable with oversight and justice those elected politicians and their appointments----that is what CITIZENSHIP entails. It is enshrined in our US Constitution and Bill of Rights and any policies or laws that BLOCK AND MAKE IMPOSSIBLE that civic duty is ILLEGAL and can be VOIDED. MOVING FORWARD US CITIES as FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES and its goals are just that ILLEGAL BLOCKING of our civic duties.
We always try to bring our global banking 1% FREEMASON STARS this time literary Dan Brown to see the patterns by CREATIVE ARTS controlled by global banking 1% set the societal FADS decades before the policies start to fall into place. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to understand the goals of SMART CITY are TOTALITARIAN and REPRESSIVE. We can understand that placing all that is CIVIC-----government, business and economic development, education, communications and media all online and digital at the same time building ONE WORLD ONE TECHNOLOGY GRID in ways that will make it impossible for any 99% of WE THE PEOPLE to access it-----one snap of the fingers and global Google and internet are gone with the wind for all but the global 1%.
One thing our national and international media send out as news over and over is -------nations all around the world are becoming more far-right, authoritarian, militaristic, extreme wealth extreme poverty -----you know FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIAN MARXISM. Indeed, global banking 1% have Russia, China and Asian nations, Arabic and African nations, Latin America and US/Canada/Europe all becoming AUTHORITARIAN. This article wants to pretend that misogyny is coming from this Chinese leader when in fact the far-right wing authoritarian militaristic dictatorships are ALWAYS SUBJUGATING WOMEN. That is why CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and global banking are filling our 5% candidates and organization leaders with HILLARY NASTY WOMEN.
China is taking a lead in SMART CITIES because it is DEEP, DEEP, REALLY DEEP STATE perfect with closing 99% of Chinese citizens into DARK AGES authoritarianism---United Nations and CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA have these few decades been BFF to these global 1% Chinese loving that ONE PARTY AUTHORITARIAN RULE. Really think US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE SMART CITIES will be different?
Global Opinions
Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rise in China has been powered by sexism
by Leta Hong Fincher by Leta Hong Fincher
Global Opinions
March 1
Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Aug. 1, 2017. (Andy Wong/AP)Leta Hong Fincher is the author of “Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality” and the forthcoming “Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China.”
China’s strongman authoritarianism under President Xi Jinping has taken an alarming turn for the worse. With Sunday’s announcement that China’s Communist Party will abolish presidential term limits, Xi is poised to stay in office beyond the end of his second term and likely be China’s paramount ruler for many years to come.
There are many reasons that China’s modern Communist Party has survived for almost 70 years, in spite of the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. But it is impossible to understand the longevity of China’s Communist Party without recognizing the patriarchal underpinnings of its authoritarianism. In short, China’s ultimate strongman, Xi, like other autocrats around the world, views patriarchal authoritarianism as critical for the survival of the Communist Party.
For the first several years of his presidency (until early 2016), Xi was quite literally called Xi Dada — “Big Daddy Xi” — in the state media, which built up a personality cult around him the likes of which had not been seen since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, under Chairman Mao Zedong. This language celebrates Xi for his manliness and upholds the male-dominated family as the basic foundation of a strong and stable state. Propaganda images depict Xi as the father of the Chinese nation in a “family-state under heaven” (jia guo tian xia). When Xi became president, pop and hip-hop songs emerged idolizing him not just as a father but as an ideal husband, too, such as “Be a Man Like Xi Dada” and one of the most popular songs of all, “If You Want to Marry, Marry Someone Like Xi Dada.”
The Communist Party aggressively perpetuates traditional gender norms and reduces women to their roles as reproductive tools for the state, dutiful wives, mothers and baby breeders in the home, in order to minimize social unrest and give birth to future generations of skilled workers. The party also is carrying out an unprecedented crackdown on feminist activists because China’s all-male rulers seem to think that China’s entire security state would collapse were it not for the subjugation of women.
Xi’s hypermasculine personality cult became so extreme that some Communist Party officials felt it had gone too far and in 2016 urged the state media to drop the term “Xi Dada.” Nonetheless, Chinese state media continue to present the nation as one big family, which needs strong, manly leadership in the form of Xi, the paternalistic patriarch.
Yet just how strong is this strongman in reality? Behind macho propaganda videos, Xi’s hold on power is much more fragile than it appears.
The Chinese government’s backlash against feminism, ever since the arrest of five women known as the Feminist Five in 2015, is a form of state-level, fragile masculinity, terrified at the prospect of emancipated women rising up to challenge the Communist Party’s political legitimacy. Under Xi’s leadership, Chinese authorities have carried out an unprecedented crackdown on feminist activists, making “feminism” a politically sensitive word and even making the #MeToo hashtag against sexual harassment subject to frequent censorship.
China’s economy has entered a protracted slowdown just as the country is beginning to face the severe demographic crisis of an aging population and a shrinking workforce. By most accounts, China’s decades-long “economic miracle” of double-digit growth rates is over. In response to the slowdown, Chinese propaganda under Xi’s leadership has revived sexist elements of Confucianism, in particular trying to push the notion that a traditional family (based on marriage between a man and a virtuous, obedient woman) is the foundation of a stable government.
For example, the official Xinhua news agency ran a long article last year about Xi and traditional “family values” (jiafeng). The article points out that the Chinese word for family (jia) is also part of the compound word for nation (guojia): “Xi Jinping has often stressed the importance of family values. He says ‘little family’ but he has in mind the ‘big family’ [the nation],” Xinhua said.
Meanwhile, in almost 70 years of Chinese Communist history, there has never been a single woman on the Politburo’s elite Standing Committee. Why? I believe that China’s all-male rulers have decided that the systematic subjugation of women is essential to maintaining Communist Party survival. As this battle for party survival becomes even more intense, the crackdown on feminism and women’s rights — indeed, on all of civil society — is likely to intensify.
This trend is very dangerous for the rest of the world as well, since it is already happening in other authoritarian countries such as the Philippines, Russia, Iran and Turkey, with misogynistic “strongmen” who are rolling back women’s rights as an integral part of their authoritarian repression. We see it even in the United States, with rising authoritarianism and the undermining of long-established democratic norms wrapped up in a strong backlash against feminism.
How do we fight rising authoritarianism in China and around the world? By fighting the patriarchy. Supporting feminist activists and promoting women’s rights are the most effective way to stop the growing, misogynistic assault on democratic freedoms globally.
__________________________________________
We have to give the #1 OLD WORLD GLOBAL BANKING 1% journal TIME MAGAZINE credit for consistency------China does capitalism better than US. China's global 1% are millionaires now billionaires because CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA moved our US corporations to Foreign Economic Zones and created artificial 'capitalism' -----this was not built by Chinese communists. US 99% WE THE PEOPLE know last century's thriving best in world history real free market capitalism was driven by left social progressive capitalism----what was built in America was taken to China to make China appear to have a functioning authoritarian capitalism.
We want to simply make clear---MOVING FORWARD US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----is MADE IN CHINA MADE IN AMERICA. There is no intention of democratizing or liberalizing China---China is going to extreme authoritarianism ---extreme wealth and extreme poverty. Chinese news say the 99% just love that COMMUNISM----same as North Korean news----just as 99% WE THE PEOPLE have loved CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA-----same FAKE POLLING.
Moving hundreds of trillions of US wealth to Chinese Foreign Economic Zones with massive and systemic frauds----oh, yeah that's the best kind of capitalism.
Why China Does Capitalism Better than the U.S.
By Tony Karon Thursday, Jan. 20, 2011
One of the great ironies revealed by the global recession that began in 2008 is that Communist Party–ruled China may be doing a better job managing capitalism's crisis than the democratically elected U.S. government. Beijing's stimulus spending was larger, infinitely more effective at overcoming the slowdown and directed at laying the infrastructural tracks for further economic expansion.
DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED GOVERNMENT????? OH, REALLY?????? WHO BELIEVES THAT BESIDES TIME MAGAZINE?
As Western democracies shuffle wheezily forward, China's economy roars along at a steady clip, having lifted some half a billion people out of poverty over the past three decades and rapidly created the world's largest middle class to provide an engine for long-term domestic consumer demand. Sure, there's massive social inequality, but there always is in a capitalist system. (Income inequality rates in the U.S. are some of the worst in the industrialized world, and more Americans are falling into poverty than are being raised out of it. The number of Americans officially designated as living in poverty in 2009 — 43 million — was the highest in the 51 years that records have been kept.)
(See TIME's photo-essay "The Rise of Hu Jintao.")
Beijing is also doing a far more effective job than Washington of tooling its economy to meet future challenges — at least according to historian Francis Fukuyama, erstwhile neoconservative intellectual heavyweight. "President Hu Jintao's rare state visit to Washington this week comes at a time when many Chinese see their weathering of the financial crisis as a vindication of their own system, and the beginning of an era in which U.S.-style liberal ideas will no longer be dominant," wrote Fukuyama in Monday's Financial Times under a headline stating that the U.S. had little to teach China. "State-owned enterprises are back in vogue, and were the chosen mechanism through which Beijing administered its massive stimulus."
Today Chinese leaders are more inclined to scold the U.S. — its debtor to the tune of close to a trillion dollars — than to emulate it, and Fukuyama noted that polls show that a larger percentage of Chinese believe their country is headed in the right direction, compared with Americans. China's success in navigating the economic crisis, wrote Fukuyama, was based on the ability of its authoritarian political system to "make large, complex decisions quickly, and ... make them relatively well, at least in economic policy."
These are startling observations from a writer who, 19 years ago, famously proclaimed that the collapse of the Soviet Union heralded "the end of history as such ... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
(See TIME's video "An Eye on China, Old and New.")
Fukuyama has had the good grace and intellectual honesty to admit he was wrong. And he's no apologist for Chinese authoritarianism, calling out its abuses and corruption, and making clear that he believes the absence of democracy will eventually hobble China's progress. Still, as he noted in the Financial Times, while they don't hold elections, China's communist leaders are nonetheless responsive to public opinion. (Of course they are! A party brought to power by a peasant rebellion knows full well the destructive potential of the rage of working people.) But the regime claims solid support from the Chinese middle class, and hedges against social explosion by directing resources and investment to more marginal parts of the country.
China's leaders, of course, never subscribed to Fukuyama's "end of history" maxim; the Marxism on which they were reared would have taught them that there is no contingent relationship between capitalism and democracy, and they only had to look at neighbors such as Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore to see economic success stories under authoritarian rule — although the prosperity thus achieved played a major role in transforming Taiwan and South Korea into the noisy democracies they are today. Nor were Beijing's leaders under any illusions that the free market could take care of such basic needs as education, health care and infrastructure necessary to keep the system as a whole growing.
But Fukuyama also made a point about the comparative inability of the U.S. system to respond decisively to a long-term crisis. "China adapts quickly, making difficult decisions and implementing them effectively," Fukuyama wrote. "Americans pride themselves on constitutional checks and balances, based on a political culture that distrusts centralised government. This system has ensured individual liberty and a vibrant private sector, but it has now become polarised and ideologically rigid. At present it shows little appetite for dealing with the long-term fiscal challenges the U.S. faces. Democracy in America may have an inherent legitimacy that the Chinese system lacks, but it will not be much of a model to anyone if the government is divided against itself and cannot govern."
LET'S SEE---CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA ARE THE SAME GLOBAL BANKING 1% PARTY----MOVING FORWARD SAME AGENDA WHILE MANUFACTURING CRISES ----POLARIZED?
Money has emerged as the electoral trump card in the U.S. political system, and corporations have a Supreme Court–recognized right to use their considerable financial muscle to promote candidates and policies favorable to their business operations and to resist policies and shut out candidates deemed inimical to their business interests. So whether it's health reform or the stimulus package, the power of special interests in the U.S. system invariably produces either gridlock or mishmash legislation crafted to please the narrow interests of a variety of competing interests rather than the aggregated interests of the economy and society as a whole. Efficient and rational decisionmaking it's not. Nor does it appear capable of tackling long-term problems.
THE 99% WE THE PEOPLE WILL FIX ALL THAT BAD DECISION-MAKING BY GETTING RID OF GLOBAL BANKING PLAYERS WHOSE ONLY TALENT IS LYING, CHEATING, AND STEALING.
China is the extreme opposite, of course. It can ride roughshod over the lives of its citizens (e.g., building a dam that requires the forced relocation of 1.5 million people who have no channels through which to protest). But China's system is unlikely to give corporations the power to veto or shape government decisionmaking to suit their bottom lines at the expense of the needs of the system as a whole in the way that, to choose but one example, U.S. pharmaceutical companies are able to wield political influence to deny the government the right to negotiate drug prices for the public health system. Fukuyama seems to be warning that, in Darwinian terms, the Chinese system may be more adaptive than the land of the free.
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We always like to include in our public policy discussions how global banking 1% use those freemason STARS to sell their societal fads. There are two reasons DAN BROWN --ORIGIN is appropriate to discussions tied to civic voice/duty/oversight and accountability. First, the description of the anti-hero's conditions for announcing his BEST IN WORLD HISTORY discoveries are so contrived, contained, totally virtual allowing no outside communications to a presentation orchestrated... to a tee-------it gives a perfect description of how SMART CITIES will operate if allowed to MOVE FORWARD. Sociopaths have such a need to promote themselves as EXCEPTIONAL because they are not exceptional....these real technology advances are not exceptional and they are definitely not needed and mostly not wanted.
The second thing DAN BROWN was told to include in ORIGINS is the idea that anyone fighting against ONE WORLD ONE ENERGY/TECHNOLOGY GRID and SMART technology advances must do so because of RELIGIOUS reasons---it could not possibly be that 99% of WE THE PEOPLE do not want our lives and rights as citizens taken away.
THE DARK AGES BATTLE BETWEEN OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% KINGS AND QUEENS USING THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH RELIGION---THEY WANTED THOSE INVENTIONS --THEY WANTED TO CONTROL THE INFORMATION AROUND THESE INVENTIONS----
This is exactly what Brown sells in ORIGIN. Remember, those CATHOLIC KINGS AND QUEENS----not religious.
Lifestyle
October 12, 2017 / 8:04 AM / 6 months ago
Collective consciousness to replace God: author Dan Brown
Douglas Busvine
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Humanity no longer needs God but may with the help of artificial intelligence develop a new form of collective consciousness that fulfils the role of religion, U.S. author Dan Brown said on Thursday.
Brown made the provocative remark at the Frankfurt Book Fair where he was promoting his new novel, “Origin”, the fifth outing for Harvard “symbology” professor Robert Langdon, the protagonist of “The Da Vinci Code”, a book that questioned the history of Christianity.
“Origin” was inspired by the question “Will God survive science?”, said Brown, adding that this had never happened in the history of humanity.
Sponsored
“Are we naive today to believe that the gods of the present will survive and be here in a hundred years?” Brown, 53, told a packed news conference.
Set in Spain, “Origin” opens with Langdon arriving at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao for an announcement by a reclusive billionaire futurist that promises to “change the face of science forever”.
Events quickly take an unexpected turn, providing a plot vehicle for Langdon to visit the historic sites of Spain - including Barcelona, capital of the northern region of Catalonia that is now in the grip of a secession crisis.
Brown, who studied art history in Seville, expressed his concern and sympathy for both sides in the political stand-off.
“I love Catalonia. I love Spain. I hope they work it out. It’s a heartbreaking situation, but it’s also a sign of the times,” said Brown, adding the crisis also reflected the tension in society between the ancient and the modern.
Brown, who has sold 200 million books in 56 languages, admitted to not having read a novel in five years. But he investigated deeply and spent a lot of time talking to futurists to come up with the storyline for “Origin”.
He recognized that his views may not be welcomed by clerics, but called for greater harmony between the world’s great religions and those who profess no faith.
“Christianity, Judaism and Islam all share a gospel, loosely, and it’s important that we all realize that,” he said. “Our religions are much more similar than they are different.”
Turning to the future, Brown said technological change and the development of artificial intelligence would transform the concept of the divine.
“We will start to find our spiritual experiences through our interconnections with each other,” he said, forecasting the emergence of “some form of global consciousness that we perceive and that becomes our divine”.
“Our need for that exterior god, that sits up there and judges us ... will diminish and eventually disappear.”
_______________________________________
East India becoming quite the TOTALITARIAN STATE MOVING FORWARD.
'Other critics have also warned of this potential for exclusion in smart cities. Well-known smart city critic Adam Greenfield poignantly asks, “What role will the citizen play [in the smart city]? Is the city-dweller best visualised as a smoothly moving pixel, travelling to work, shops and home again, on a colourful 3D graphic display? Or is the citizen rightfully an unpredictable source of obstreperous demand...s and assertions of rights?”'
Global Google does not allow many searchs to give SMART CITY critics unless it is those FAKE Clinton neo-liberal 'populist' outlets. There is actually thousands of academic articles written AGAINST SMART CITIES for the same reasons REAL left social progressive give. It is clear these SMART CITIES having in mind the DARK AGES MEDIEVAL CASTLES protecting those global 1% and their 2% from the 99% MASSES. We read where the Chinese LEADER FOR LIFE is taking China back to a CLOSED SOCIETY far more authoritarian then ever while the great leader allows he and Chinese 1% partner with global neo-liberalism ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE.
We try to make clear for those US citizens black, white, and brown feeling they must be PLAYERS in order to get into these CASTLES......the goals of SMART CITY and technology with artificial intelligence and robotics to to replace ALL 99% OF CITIZENS....no 10% winners---no 5% winners---even those global 2% once these structures are built are no longer needed or wanted by global 1%.
Where the 99% of WE THE PEOPLE protest MOVING FORWARD for civil reasons-----there is no way MOVING FORWARD should have ANY RELIGIOUS supporters-----only 5% FAKE religious players would want these kinds of extremist deep state structures.
Who Is the Smart City for?
Stephen Assink
Wikipedia Commons
The Beautiful
The Prosperous
The Just and Well-Ordered
Who doesn’t love a good dystopian thriller? With unforgettable characters and edge-of-your-seat chase scenes, these movies are entertaining, exciting, and extremely lucrative. From Blade Runner and The Matrix trilogy to Elysium and the Hunger Games series, these movies have defined our conception of a post-apocalyptic world. But the real power of this genre lies not in its special effects but in its creative baring of social tensions in futuristic megacities that today no longer look so far-fetched.
From lack of infrastructure to concentrated poverty, megacities—urban areas of 10 million or more people—present significant challenges for any local government. Concerns over social inequality have also long been a fixture of the discourse around megacities, especially so in India where there are six such metropolitan areas amid a culture defined by the hierarchies of the caste system. At the moment, however, the issue of urban exclusion in India is now coalescing around that nation’s burgeoning smart city movement.
Smart cities, according to the Indian government’s website, “are those cities which have smart (intelligent) physical, social, institutional, and economic infrastructure while ensuring centrality of citizens in a sustainable environment. It is expected that such a Smart City will generate options for all residents to pursue their livelihoods and interests meaningfully and with joy.” The impetus for India’s smart city building is largely urbanization demographics. Currently, 31 precent of India’s population is urban. That is projected to increase to 65 percent over the next decades. India has set a goal of 100 smart cities to meet the challenge of settling its growing urban migration in decent and humane ways.
Smart cities employ new technologies that integrate urban infrastructure with powerful data analytics, a trend has already hit Chicago, New York, and Rio de Janeiro, cities with significant investment in advanced urban technology. A goal of this movement as Noah Toly argues here on the Thriving Cities blog, “is to make the whole city more responsive, giving us instant access to information we can hold in one hand, turning the city into a device. By harnessing big data, we suppose we may harness the power of urbanization and the city itself—a force with few rivals in history.” Supported by powerful advocates such as Michael Bloomberg and companies such as IBM, smart cities are poised to become a dominant form of urban settlement in the twenty-first century.
Although most cities around the world are incorporating smart technology into the existing urban fabric, India aims to build its smart cities from scratch—thanks to more than $1.18 billion committed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. The city of Palava is a prime example. Considered Mumbai’s sister city, Palava is the largest privately planned city in India. Through partnering with IBM, Palava will have cutting-edge technology that will help the city government guide and manage its population. Branded as a “city of opportunity,” Palava offers residents a community that boasts lush green spaces and immaculate apartments—according to its website, “Palava isn’t just a new place to live, it’s a new way to live.”
In a country where more than 300 million people live without electricity or access to basic services, smart cities, at least on paper, seem to offer a solution combining sound infrastructure and an improved quality of life. However, critics allege that smart cities will in fact exclude those most in need of what they offer. In a recent Guardian article, journalist Shruti Ravindran highlights the growing concerns about exclusion in India’s new smart cities. In particular, Ravindran points to recent comments made by Indian economist Laveesh Bhandari:
In a monograph for a conference on smart cities in Mumbai in January, the economist and consultant Laveesh Bhandari described smart cities as “special enclaves” that would use prohibitive prices and harsh policing to prevent “millions of poor Indians” from “enjoying the privileges of such great infrastructure”. “This is the natural way of things,” he noted, “for if we do not keep them out, they will override our ability to maintain such infrastructure.” Bhandari’s bald statements sparked social-media pandemonium, and the economist is now at pains to assert he is far from uncritical of such plans.
In the United States, discourse on urban exclusion usually centers on affordable housing and how factors such as public policy or market forces have often resulted in limited availability. In India, the land sought for smart city construction could lead to the razing of poor districts, the forced removal of the poor, and their subsequent exclusion from new communities. As Ravindran reports, “Smart cities remain a key justification for a controversial land-acquisition ordinance the government is aiming to enact, which does away with mandatory consent and social safeguards for those whose lands are forcibly acquired.” Once built, smart cities could be “governed by powerful corporate entities that could override local laws and governments to ‘keep out’ the poor.” Ravindran notes that “To make sure that no one trespasses on its immaculate privatopia, Palava plans to issue its residents with ‘smart identity cards’, and will watch over them through a system of ‘smart surveillance’.”
Other critics have also warned of this potential for exclusion in smart cities. Well-known smart city critic Adam Greenfield poignantly asks, “What role will the citizen play [in the smart city]? Is the city-dweller best visualised as a smoothly moving pixel, travelling to work, shops and home again, on a colourful 3D graphic display? Or is the citizen rightfully an unpredictable source of obstreperous demands and assertions of rights?”
Like every other form of urban settlement, the smart city is a value-laden human creation enmeshed in cultural norms and political forces. Without hard work and attention to justice, this model could end up excluding those who would most benefit from it, or worse, divert funds from other distressed places. In India’s rush to transform, build, and even engineer entire new cities, critics are right to raise concerns about citizenship and access.
Even in US cities, especially places like Baltimore and Ferguson, we are confronting some of these same issues. In the same way India is wrestling with the social and ethical dynamics of the smart city, we need to equally be self-reflective about the ways we seek to improve our own cities. Every policy and plan for urban improvement need to be accompanied by difficult questions. And none are as pressing as the one confronting India at this moment: “Who is the smart city for?”
We always try to bring our global banking 1% FREEMASON STARS this time literary Dan Brown to see the patterns by CREATIVE ARTS controlled by global banking 1% set the societal FADS decades before the policies start to fall into place. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to understand the goals of SMART CITY are TOTALITARIAN and REPRESSIVE. We can understand that placing all that is CIVIC-----government, business and economic development, education, communications and media all online and digital at the same time building ONE WORLD ONE TECHNOLOGY GRID in ways that will make it impossible for any 99% of WE THE PEOPLE to access it-----one snap of the fingers and global Google and internet are gone with the wind for all but the global 1%.
One thing our national and international media send out as news over and over is -------nations all around the world are becoming more far-right, authoritarian, militaristic, extreme wealth extreme poverty -----you know FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIAN MARXISM. Indeed, global banking 1% have Russia, China and Asian nations, Arabic and African nations, Latin America and US/Canada/Europe all becoming AUTHORITARIAN. This article wants to pretend that misogyny is coming from this Chinese leader when in fact the far-right wing authoritarian militaristic dictatorships are ALWAYS SUBJUGATING WOMEN. That is why CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and global banking are filling our 5% candidates and organization leaders with HILLARY NASTY WOMEN.
China is taking a lead in SMART CITIES because it is DEEP, DEEP, REALLY DEEP STATE perfect with closing 99% of Chinese citizens into DARK AGES authoritarianism---United Nations and CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA have these few decades been BFF to these global 1% Chinese loving that ONE PARTY AUTHORITARIAN RULE. Really think US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE SMART CITIES will be different?
Global Opinions
Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rise in China has been powered by sexism
by Leta Hong Fincher by Leta Hong Fincher
Global Opinions
March 1
Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Aug. 1, 2017. (Andy Wong/AP)Leta Hong Fincher is the author of “Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality” and the forthcoming “Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China.”
China’s strongman authoritarianism under President Xi Jinping has taken an alarming turn for the worse. With Sunday’s announcement that China’s Communist Party will abolish presidential term limits, Xi is poised to stay in office beyond the end of his second term and likely be China’s paramount ruler for many years to come.
There are many reasons that China’s modern Communist Party has survived for almost 70 years, in spite of the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. But it is impossible to understand the longevity of China’s Communist Party without recognizing the patriarchal underpinnings of its authoritarianism. In short, China’s ultimate strongman, Xi, like other autocrats around the world, views patriarchal authoritarianism as critical for the survival of the Communist Party.
For the first several years of his presidency (until early 2016), Xi was quite literally called Xi Dada — “Big Daddy Xi” — in the state media, which built up a personality cult around him the likes of which had not been seen since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, under Chairman Mao Zedong. This language celebrates Xi for his manliness and upholds the male-dominated family as the basic foundation of a strong and stable state. Propaganda images depict Xi as the father of the Chinese nation in a “family-state under heaven” (jia guo tian xia). When Xi became president, pop and hip-hop songs emerged idolizing him not just as a father but as an ideal husband, too, such as “Be a Man Like Xi Dada” and one of the most popular songs of all, “If You Want to Marry, Marry Someone Like Xi Dada.”
The Communist Party aggressively perpetuates traditional gender norms and reduces women to their roles as reproductive tools for the state, dutiful wives, mothers and baby breeders in the home, in order to minimize social unrest and give birth to future generations of skilled workers. The party also is carrying out an unprecedented crackdown on feminist activists because China’s all-male rulers seem to think that China’s entire security state would collapse were it not for the subjugation of women.
Xi’s hypermasculine personality cult became so extreme that some Communist Party officials felt it had gone too far and in 2016 urged the state media to drop the term “Xi Dada.” Nonetheless, Chinese state media continue to present the nation as one big family, which needs strong, manly leadership in the form of Xi, the paternalistic patriarch.
Yet just how strong is this strongman in reality? Behind macho propaganda videos, Xi’s hold on power is much more fragile than it appears.
The Chinese government’s backlash against feminism, ever since the arrest of five women known as the Feminist Five in 2015, is a form of state-level, fragile masculinity, terrified at the prospect of emancipated women rising up to challenge the Communist Party’s political legitimacy. Under Xi’s leadership, Chinese authorities have carried out an unprecedented crackdown on feminist activists, making “feminism” a politically sensitive word and even making the #MeToo hashtag against sexual harassment subject to frequent censorship.
China’s economy has entered a protracted slowdown just as the country is beginning to face the severe demographic crisis of an aging population and a shrinking workforce. By most accounts, China’s decades-long “economic miracle” of double-digit growth rates is over. In response to the slowdown, Chinese propaganda under Xi’s leadership has revived sexist elements of Confucianism, in particular trying to push the notion that a traditional family (based on marriage between a man and a virtuous, obedient woman) is the foundation of a stable government.
For example, the official Xinhua news agency ran a long article last year about Xi and traditional “family values” (jiafeng). The article points out that the Chinese word for family (jia) is also part of the compound word for nation (guojia): “Xi Jinping has often stressed the importance of family values. He says ‘little family’ but he has in mind the ‘big family’ [the nation],” Xinhua said.
Meanwhile, in almost 70 years of Chinese Communist history, there has never been a single woman on the Politburo’s elite Standing Committee. Why? I believe that China’s all-male rulers have decided that the systematic subjugation of women is essential to maintaining Communist Party survival. As this battle for party survival becomes even more intense, the crackdown on feminism and women’s rights — indeed, on all of civil society — is likely to intensify.
This trend is very dangerous for the rest of the world as well, since it is already happening in other authoritarian countries such as the Philippines, Russia, Iran and Turkey, with misogynistic “strongmen” who are rolling back women’s rights as an integral part of their authoritarian repression. We see it even in the United States, with rising authoritarianism and the undermining of long-established democratic norms wrapped up in a strong backlash against feminism.
How do we fight rising authoritarianism in China and around the world? By fighting the patriarchy. Supporting feminist activists and promoting women’s rights are the most effective way to stop the growing, misogynistic assault on democratic freedoms globally.
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We have to give the #1 OLD WORLD GLOBAL BANKING 1% journal TIME MAGAZINE credit for consistency------China does capitalism better than US. China's global 1% are millionaires now billionaires because CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA moved our US corporations to Foreign Economic Zones and created artificial 'capitalism' -----this was not built by Chinese communists. US 99% WE THE PEOPLE know last century's thriving best in world history real free market capitalism was driven by left social progressive capitalism----what was built in America was taken to China to make China appear to have a functioning authoritarian capitalism.
We want to simply make clear---MOVING FORWARD US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----is MADE IN CHINA MADE IN AMERICA. There is no intention of democratizing or liberalizing China---China is going to extreme authoritarianism ---extreme wealth and extreme poverty. Chinese news say the 99% just love that COMMUNISM----same as North Korean news----just as 99% WE THE PEOPLE have loved CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA-----same FAKE POLLING.
Moving hundreds of trillions of US wealth to Chinese Foreign Economic Zones with massive and systemic frauds----oh, yeah that's the best kind of capitalism.
Why China Does Capitalism Better than the U.S.
By Tony Karon Thursday, Jan. 20, 2011
One of the great ironies revealed by the global recession that began in 2008 is that Communist Party–ruled China may be doing a better job managing capitalism's crisis than the democratically elected U.S. government. Beijing's stimulus spending was larger, infinitely more effective at overcoming the slowdown and directed at laying the infrastructural tracks for further economic expansion.
DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED GOVERNMENT????? OH, REALLY?????? WHO BELIEVES THAT BESIDES TIME MAGAZINE?
As Western democracies shuffle wheezily forward, China's economy roars along at a steady clip, having lifted some half a billion people out of poverty over the past three decades and rapidly created the world's largest middle class to provide an engine for long-term domestic consumer demand. Sure, there's massive social inequality, but there always is in a capitalist system. (Income inequality rates in the U.S. are some of the worst in the industrialized world, and more Americans are falling into poverty than are being raised out of it. The number of Americans officially designated as living in poverty in 2009 — 43 million — was the highest in the 51 years that records have been kept.)
(See TIME's photo-essay "The Rise of Hu Jintao.")
Beijing is also doing a far more effective job than Washington of tooling its economy to meet future challenges — at least according to historian Francis Fukuyama, erstwhile neoconservative intellectual heavyweight. "President Hu Jintao's rare state visit to Washington this week comes at a time when many Chinese see their weathering of the financial crisis as a vindication of their own system, and the beginning of an era in which U.S.-style liberal ideas will no longer be dominant," wrote Fukuyama in Monday's Financial Times under a headline stating that the U.S. had little to teach China. "State-owned enterprises are back in vogue, and were the chosen mechanism through which Beijing administered its massive stimulus."
Today Chinese leaders are more inclined to scold the U.S. — its debtor to the tune of close to a trillion dollars — than to emulate it, and Fukuyama noted that polls show that a larger percentage of Chinese believe their country is headed in the right direction, compared with Americans. China's success in navigating the economic crisis, wrote Fukuyama, was based on the ability of its authoritarian political system to "make large, complex decisions quickly, and ... make them relatively well, at least in economic policy."
These are startling observations from a writer who, 19 years ago, famously proclaimed that the collapse of the Soviet Union heralded "the end of history as such ... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
(See TIME's video "An Eye on China, Old and New.")
Fukuyama has had the good grace and intellectual honesty to admit he was wrong. And he's no apologist for Chinese authoritarianism, calling out its abuses and corruption, and making clear that he believes the absence of democracy will eventually hobble China's progress. Still, as he noted in the Financial Times, while they don't hold elections, China's communist leaders are nonetheless responsive to public opinion. (Of course they are! A party brought to power by a peasant rebellion knows full well the destructive potential of the rage of working people.) But the regime claims solid support from the Chinese middle class, and hedges against social explosion by directing resources and investment to more marginal parts of the country.
China's leaders, of course, never subscribed to Fukuyama's "end of history" maxim; the Marxism on which they were reared would have taught them that there is no contingent relationship between capitalism and democracy, and they only had to look at neighbors such as Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore to see economic success stories under authoritarian rule — although the prosperity thus achieved played a major role in transforming Taiwan and South Korea into the noisy democracies they are today. Nor were Beijing's leaders under any illusions that the free market could take care of such basic needs as education, health care and infrastructure necessary to keep the system as a whole growing.
But Fukuyama also made a point about the comparative inability of the U.S. system to respond decisively to a long-term crisis. "China adapts quickly, making difficult decisions and implementing them effectively," Fukuyama wrote. "Americans pride themselves on constitutional checks and balances, based on a political culture that distrusts centralised government. This system has ensured individual liberty and a vibrant private sector, but it has now become polarised and ideologically rigid. At present it shows little appetite for dealing with the long-term fiscal challenges the U.S. faces. Democracy in America may have an inherent legitimacy that the Chinese system lacks, but it will not be much of a model to anyone if the government is divided against itself and cannot govern."
LET'S SEE---CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA ARE THE SAME GLOBAL BANKING 1% PARTY----MOVING FORWARD SAME AGENDA WHILE MANUFACTURING CRISES ----POLARIZED?
Money has emerged as the electoral trump card in the U.S. political system, and corporations have a Supreme Court–recognized right to use their considerable financial muscle to promote candidates and policies favorable to their business operations and to resist policies and shut out candidates deemed inimical to their business interests. So whether it's health reform or the stimulus package, the power of special interests in the U.S. system invariably produces either gridlock or mishmash legislation crafted to please the narrow interests of a variety of competing interests rather than the aggregated interests of the economy and society as a whole. Efficient and rational decisionmaking it's not. Nor does it appear capable of tackling long-term problems.
THE 99% WE THE PEOPLE WILL FIX ALL THAT BAD DECISION-MAKING BY GETTING RID OF GLOBAL BANKING PLAYERS WHOSE ONLY TALENT IS LYING, CHEATING, AND STEALING.
China is the extreme opposite, of course. It can ride roughshod over the lives of its citizens (e.g., building a dam that requires the forced relocation of 1.5 million people who have no channels through which to protest). But China's system is unlikely to give corporations the power to veto or shape government decisionmaking to suit their bottom lines at the expense of the needs of the system as a whole in the way that, to choose but one example, U.S. pharmaceutical companies are able to wield political influence to deny the government the right to negotiate drug prices for the public health system. Fukuyama seems to be warning that, in Darwinian terms, the Chinese system may be more adaptive than the land of the free.
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We always like to include in our public policy discussions how global banking 1% use those freemason STARS to sell their societal fads. There are two reasons DAN BROWN --ORIGIN is appropriate to discussions tied to civic voice/duty/oversight and accountability. First, the description of the anti-hero's conditions for announcing his BEST IN WORLD HISTORY discoveries are so contrived, contained, totally virtual allowing no outside communications to a presentation orchestrated... to a tee-------it gives a perfect description of how SMART CITIES will operate if allowed to MOVE FORWARD. Sociopaths have such a need to promote themselves as EXCEPTIONAL because they are not exceptional....these real technology advances are not exceptional and they are definitely not needed and mostly not wanted.
The second thing DAN BROWN was told to include in ORIGINS is the idea that anyone fighting against ONE WORLD ONE ENERGY/TECHNOLOGY GRID and SMART technology advances must do so because of RELIGIOUS reasons---it could not possibly be that 99% of WE THE PEOPLE do not want our lives and rights as citizens taken away.
THE DARK AGES BATTLE BETWEEN OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% KINGS AND QUEENS USING THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH RELIGION---THEY WANTED THOSE INVENTIONS --THEY WANTED TO CONTROL THE INFORMATION AROUND THESE INVENTIONS----
This is exactly what Brown sells in ORIGIN. Remember, those CATHOLIC KINGS AND QUEENS----not religious.
Lifestyle
October 12, 2017 / 8:04 AM / 6 months ago
Collective consciousness to replace God: author Dan Brown
Douglas Busvine
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Humanity no longer needs God but may with the help of artificial intelligence develop a new form of collective consciousness that fulfils the role of religion, U.S. author Dan Brown said on Thursday.
Brown made the provocative remark at the Frankfurt Book Fair where he was promoting his new novel, “Origin”, the fifth outing for Harvard “symbology” professor Robert Langdon, the protagonist of “The Da Vinci Code”, a book that questioned the history of Christianity.
“Origin” was inspired by the question “Will God survive science?”, said Brown, adding that this had never happened in the history of humanity.
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“Are we naive today to believe that the gods of the present will survive and be here in a hundred years?” Brown, 53, told a packed news conference.
Set in Spain, “Origin” opens with Langdon arriving at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao for an announcement by a reclusive billionaire futurist that promises to “change the face of science forever”.
Events quickly take an unexpected turn, providing a plot vehicle for Langdon to visit the historic sites of Spain - including Barcelona, capital of the northern region of Catalonia that is now in the grip of a secession crisis.
Brown, who studied art history in Seville, expressed his concern and sympathy for both sides in the political stand-off.
“I love Catalonia. I love Spain. I hope they work it out. It’s a heartbreaking situation, but it’s also a sign of the times,” said Brown, adding the crisis also reflected the tension in society between the ancient and the modern.
Brown, who has sold 200 million books in 56 languages, admitted to not having read a novel in five years. But he investigated deeply and spent a lot of time talking to futurists to come up with the storyline for “Origin”.
He recognized that his views may not be welcomed by clerics, but called for greater harmony between the world’s great religions and those who profess no faith.
“Christianity, Judaism and Islam all share a gospel, loosely, and it’s important that we all realize that,” he said. “Our religions are much more similar than they are different.”
Turning to the future, Brown said technological change and the development of artificial intelligence would transform the concept of the divine.
“We will start to find our spiritual experiences through our interconnections with each other,” he said, forecasting the emergence of “some form of global consciousness that we perceive and that becomes our divine”.
“Our need for that exterior god, that sits up there and judges us ... will diminish and eventually disappear.”
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East India becoming quite the TOTALITARIAN STATE MOVING FORWARD.
'Other critics have also warned of this potential for exclusion in smart cities. Well-known smart city critic Adam Greenfield poignantly asks, “What role will the citizen play [in the smart city]? Is the city-dweller best visualised as a smoothly moving pixel, travelling to work, shops and home again, on a colourful 3D graphic display? Or is the citizen rightfully an unpredictable source of obstreperous demand...s and assertions of rights?”'
Global Google does not allow many searchs to give SMART CITY critics unless it is those FAKE Clinton neo-liberal 'populist' outlets. There is actually thousands of academic articles written AGAINST SMART CITIES for the same reasons REAL left social progressive give. It is clear these SMART CITIES having in mind the DARK AGES MEDIEVAL CASTLES protecting those global 1% and their 2% from the 99% MASSES. We read where the Chinese LEADER FOR LIFE is taking China back to a CLOSED SOCIETY far more authoritarian then ever while the great leader allows he and Chinese 1% partner with global neo-liberalism ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE.
We try to make clear for those US citizens black, white, and brown feeling they must be PLAYERS in order to get into these CASTLES......the goals of SMART CITY and technology with artificial intelligence and robotics to to replace ALL 99% OF CITIZENS....no 10% winners---no 5% winners---even those global 2% once these structures are built are no longer needed or wanted by global 1%.
Where the 99% of WE THE PEOPLE protest MOVING FORWARD for civil reasons-----there is no way MOVING FORWARD should have ANY RELIGIOUS supporters-----only 5% FAKE religious players would want these kinds of extremist deep state structures.
Who Is the Smart City for?
Stephen Assink
Wikipedia Commons
The Beautiful
The Prosperous
The Just and Well-Ordered
Who doesn’t love a good dystopian thriller? With unforgettable characters and edge-of-your-seat chase scenes, these movies are entertaining, exciting, and extremely lucrative. From Blade Runner and The Matrix trilogy to Elysium and the Hunger Games series, these movies have defined our conception of a post-apocalyptic world. But the real power of this genre lies not in its special effects but in its creative baring of social tensions in futuristic megacities that today no longer look so far-fetched.
From lack of infrastructure to concentrated poverty, megacities—urban areas of 10 million or more people—present significant challenges for any local government. Concerns over social inequality have also long been a fixture of the discourse around megacities, especially so in India where there are six such metropolitan areas amid a culture defined by the hierarchies of the caste system. At the moment, however, the issue of urban exclusion in India is now coalescing around that nation’s burgeoning smart city movement.
Smart cities, according to the Indian government’s website, “are those cities which have smart (intelligent) physical, social, institutional, and economic infrastructure while ensuring centrality of citizens in a sustainable environment. It is expected that such a Smart City will generate options for all residents to pursue their livelihoods and interests meaningfully and with joy.” The impetus for India’s smart city building is largely urbanization demographics. Currently, 31 precent of India’s population is urban. That is projected to increase to 65 percent over the next decades. India has set a goal of 100 smart cities to meet the challenge of settling its growing urban migration in decent and humane ways.
Smart cities employ new technologies that integrate urban infrastructure with powerful data analytics, a trend has already hit Chicago, New York, and Rio de Janeiro, cities with significant investment in advanced urban technology. A goal of this movement as Noah Toly argues here on the Thriving Cities blog, “is to make the whole city more responsive, giving us instant access to information we can hold in one hand, turning the city into a device. By harnessing big data, we suppose we may harness the power of urbanization and the city itself—a force with few rivals in history.” Supported by powerful advocates such as Michael Bloomberg and companies such as IBM, smart cities are poised to become a dominant form of urban settlement in the twenty-first century.
Although most cities around the world are incorporating smart technology into the existing urban fabric, India aims to build its smart cities from scratch—thanks to more than $1.18 billion committed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. The city of Palava is a prime example. Considered Mumbai’s sister city, Palava is the largest privately planned city in India. Through partnering with IBM, Palava will have cutting-edge technology that will help the city government guide and manage its population. Branded as a “city of opportunity,” Palava offers residents a community that boasts lush green spaces and immaculate apartments—according to its website, “Palava isn’t just a new place to live, it’s a new way to live.”
In a country where more than 300 million people live without electricity or access to basic services, smart cities, at least on paper, seem to offer a solution combining sound infrastructure and an improved quality of life. However, critics allege that smart cities will in fact exclude those most in need of what they offer. In a recent Guardian article, journalist Shruti Ravindran highlights the growing concerns about exclusion in India’s new smart cities. In particular, Ravindran points to recent comments made by Indian economist Laveesh Bhandari:
In a monograph for a conference on smart cities in Mumbai in January, the economist and consultant Laveesh Bhandari described smart cities as “special enclaves” that would use prohibitive prices and harsh policing to prevent “millions of poor Indians” from “enjoying the privileges of such great infrastructure”. “This is the natural way of things,” he noted, “for if we do not keep them out, they will override our ability to maintain such infrastructure.” Bhandari’s bald statements sparked social-media pandemonium, and the economist is now at pains to assert he is far from uncritical of such plans.
In the United States, discourse on urban exclusion usually centers on affordable housing and how factors such as public policy or market forces have often resulted in limited availability. In India, the land sought for smart city construction could lead to the razing of poor districts, the forced removal of the poor, and their subsequent exclusion from new communities. As Ravindran reports, “Smart cities remain a key justification for a controversial land-acquisition ordinance the government is aiming to enact, which does away with mandatory consent and social safeguards for those whose lands are forcibly acquired.” Once built, smart cities could be “governed by powerful corporate entities that could override local laws and governments to ‘keep out’ the poor.” Ravindran notes that “To make sure that no one trespasses on its immaculate privatopia, Palava plans to issue its residents with ‘smart identity cards’, and will watch over them through a system of ‘smart surveillance’.”
Other critics have also warned of this potential for exclusion in smart cities. Well-known smart city critic Adam Greenfield poignantly asks, “What role will the citizen play [in the smart city]? Is the city-dweller best visualised as a smoothly moving pixel, travelling to work, shops and home again, on a colourful 3D graphic display? Or is the citizen rightfully an unpredictable source of obstreperous demands and assertions of rights?”
Like every other form of urban settlement, the smart city is a value-laden human creation enmeshed in cultural norms and political forces. Without hard work and attention to justice, this model could end up excluding those who would most benefit from it, or worse, divert funds from other distressed places. In India’s rush to transform, build, and even engineer entire new cities, critics are right to raise concerns about citizenship and access.
Even in US cities, especially places like Baltimore and Ferguson, we are confronting some of these same issues. In the same way India is wrestling with the social and ethical dynamics of the smart city, we need to equally be self-reflective about the ways we seek to improve our own cities. Every policy and plan for urban improvement need to be accompanied by difficult questions. And none are as pressing as the one confronting India at this moment: “Who is the smart city for?”
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