12.22.11

Lock n Loll

Posted in Cyberterrorism, Made in China, Phlogiston, Rock 'n' Roll at 11:00 am by George Smith

Guitar Player magazine has bowed to the inevitable. The issue now on newsstands features a cover story on affordable guitars for the rock n roller. With one exception, they are all made in China or Indonesia. The outlier is manufactured in Canada and is on the high end of the price range the story dictates, instruments under $500.

All the guitars are either licensed American designs, copies of US designs, or fundamentally based on old US models. Many of them are made under American brand names, companies which now manufacture more in China than they do domestically, where production is relegated to high end custom pieces for the artisan (read wealthy snob) economy.

The magazine is a bit tortured by the turn of events, as evidenced by loud assertions in the introductory ‘graphs on how every guitar was rigorously tested for quality in workmanship by its reviewers. But its editors now well know that the buying power of a great deal of its readership, being American, is either destroyed or seriously impaired. (No link — GP magazine does not put publish its features on the web.)

And the only instruments average readers can afford are those made in China.

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Then there’s this article, today: Chinese Hack Into US Chamber of Commerce, Authorities Say

There is a bit of delicious irony here. The Chamber of Commerce being a trade lobbying group which represents so many of the large multi-national corporations which have mercilessly downsized American jobs, for the sake of cheap labor in China.

The hacking story is not novel. There is nothing new here, just the usual revelation that Chinese spying operations are aimed at everything.

Although true, most of the quotes — taken from the usual officials — take on a laughable quality, considering how much has already been either carted off to China, or ceded to that country, simply for a corporate shareholder’s grasping benefit.

For example, this from 1 percenter Richard Clarke — notorious for his love of 80 buck white wine, still made in America:

“I don’t think the Chamber of Commerce has anything worth stealing, but it’s part of a pattern of the Chinese stealing of everything they can, and that’s worrying,” Clarke said.

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“You stack all of that up and I think there’s a case to be made that this may be the greatest transfer of wealth through theft and piracy in the history of the world and we are on the losing end of it,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

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“This is a national, long-term strategic threat to the United States of America. This is an issue where a failure is not an option,” said Robert Bryant at the National Counterintelligence Executive.

National long-term strategic threat. The greatest transfer of wealth in history. The sound you can’t hear in cyberspace is DD’s loud horselaugh when reading the pompous piffle of miscellaneous hypocrites and shoeshine boys.

Nice drink, not made in China. I heard about it from the famous cyberwar plutocrat.

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