Month: January 2021

The prevalence of obesity has become a worldwide phenomenon, and in China, the world’s most populous country, adults are becoming increasingly overweight. 

It seems that over the last few decades, China has “absorbed” the best the “West” has had to offer, which includes fast-food restaurants, credit cards, smartphones, apps, and also all the stolen intellectual property, but at the same time imported the worst. 

We outlined in 2013 that American influence (“lazy lifestyles”) was quickly spreading across China, creating a massive and unspoken diabetes crisis.  

Fast forward seven years later, shocking new statistics show the percentage of overweight Chinese adults has skyrocketed since the early 2000s, according to BBC News. 

China’s National Health Commission wrote in a new report that in 2002, 29% of adults were overweight. As of 2020, the figure is now 50% of adults are classified as overweight, of whom 16.4% are obese. 

Over the last couple of decades, China’s economic miracle has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class. This ultimately changed their lifestyles to those that closely resembled ones in America: one that is exceptionally lazy. 

The report outlines how Chinese citizens infrequently exercise, specifying stating that less than 25% of adults workout at least once per week. It was also noted that meat consumption has soared while healthy food intake has dropped. 

Wang Dan, a nutritionist in the country, was quoted by AFP as saying that an abundance of Chinese adults “exercise too little, are under too much pressure, and have an unhealthy work schedule.”

The report’s release came when China’s leaders recently unveiled plans to suppress the obesity crisis.  

It was noted in August that Beijing requested citizens to reduce food waste and asked them to decrease food intake. 

Shanghai officials asked residents to snitch on people who overate. The government asked diners to order one fewer dish than usual to conserve food. There was even a restaurant in southern Hunan province that weighed patrons before they ate to adjust their meal size. 

The topic of obesity comes into focus as the pandemic has shown overweight or obese people suffer more severe complications or death from COVID-19. 

Perhaps in Karl Marx’s eyes, he would see this as just another symptom as the Chinese have betrayed their socialist ideals and instead placed cheap consumerism on a pedal stool. 

Authored by Jake Johnson via CommonDreams.org,

Hours after the U.S. flew two nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over the Persian Gulf for the second time this month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed Thursday that he is aware of intelligence suggesting that President Donald Trump’s administration is engaged in a “plot to fabricate a pretext for war”during its final days in power.

“Instead of fighting Covid in the U.S., Donald Trump and cohorts waste billions to fly B-52s and send armadas to our region,” Zarif tweeted, referring to a Wednesday maneuver by the U.S. that American officials predictably characterized as defensive. The flight came just over a week after the U.S. sailed a nuclear submarine through the Persian Gulf and touted the vessel’s “ability to carry up to 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles.”

“Intelligence from Iraq indicates a plot to fabricate a pretext for war,” Zarif said Thursday. “Iran doesn’t seek war but will openly and directly defend its people, security, and vital interests.”

The warning from Iran’s top diplomat, a key negotiator of the nuclear agreement that Trump violated in 2018, came after U.S. officials blamed Iran for a recent missile attack on the American embassy in Baghdad and claimed without evidence that Tehran is preparing a “possibly imminent attack” on U.S. forces in the Middle East.

“Our embassy in Baghdad got hit Sunday by several rockets. Three rockets failed to launch,” Trump tweeted last week. “Guess where they were from: IRAN. Now we hear chatter of additional attacks against Americans in Iraq.”

Iran denied responsibility for the embassy attack—which injured one Iraqi and damaged two buildings—and accused the Trump administration of “seeking to increase tensions” in the region with baseless allegations.

One unnamed senior U.S. defense official expressed concern to CNN Wednesday that “some within the government are painting the situation with Iran as more dire than it actually is and are preoccupied with the potential for retaliatory attacks by Iran to mark the anniversary of [Gen. Qasem] Soleimani’s assassination,” which Trump ordered nearly a year ago. Denounced as a violation of international law, the killing nearly provoked an all-out war between the U.S. and Iran.

Can you imagine if #Iran flew bomber jets over the Gulf of Mexico and called it a “defensive move”? pic.twitter.com/lwUUPGKrLi

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) December 30, 2020

“When you need a show of force to deter attacks around the anniversary of an assassination that you originally justified as ‘reestablishing deterrence,’ you haven’t reestablished deterrence,” tweeted Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), in response to the B-52 flight Wednesday. “And yes, obviously the whole ‘reestablishing deterrence’ claim was dishonest nonsense from the beginning, but it’s worth pointing out that it’s been disproven even according to its own dishonest, nonsensical terms.”

The latest B-52 maneuver took place amid simmering fears that Trump and the warhawks in his administration could be angling to attack Iran in a last-ditch effort to undermine President-elect Joe Biden’s push to reestablish diplomatic relations with Tehran and return the U.S. to compliance with the nuclear accord. Just last month, Trump reportedly asked his advisers for a strike on Iran’s primary nuclear energy site.

In an op-ed for Responsible Statecraft over the weekend, former CIA analyst Paul Pillar wrote that the “the objective of sabotaging the next administration points to one of the most likely and dangerous things that the unhinged lame duck president might do in his final days in office, which is to initiate a military clash with Iran.”

Sina Toossi, senior research analyst with the National Iranian American Council, echoed Pillar’s warning in a tweet on Wednesday. “War with Iran,” wrote Toossi, “could be Trump’s final punishment on the American people for rejecting him and a massive act of sabotage against Biden for defeating him.”