How China Spied on the African Union’s Computers (opens in new tab)

I can feel the tensions between the West and China heating up notch by notch now.. It's a bit uncomfortable.

I even feel a personal dampening on what I will say publicly about China on social media, just because of hypothetical tech/travel opportunities, and I don't even live there.

The CCP banned hip hop music in the country the other day, and they're pressuring the Hong Kong courts to make guilty rulings against democracy dissidents: https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-attacks-hong-kongs-rule...

It feels like there could possibly be more larger scale problems going forward and I'm slightly jittery.

On the works here is for China to build the next generation of nuclear reactors in the UK let’s see how will that turn out.

The poverty trap right now is:

1) Loan from the IMF

2) Restructure your debt = privatization = loss of sovereignty and control

3) Repeat

The hope is that through a regional central bank, regional investment bank and a regional monetary fund they can break away from the shackles of predatory psycopaths like the IMF and the World Bank.

I personally think this will not actually succeed and neocolonial powers will do everything in their power so the union does not succeed.

For example, UNASUR, the Latin American equivalent of African Union, is dead on arrival because of corruption. The president pro-tempore, Macri, doesn't seem to be representing regional interests at all.

Well, at least they got their freedom from European colonialism.

Although they never really got that 100%.

Most of the french speaking african countries (and some others) don't even own their own currency[1]. The way they can spend "their" money is dicated by guidelines set by the french Department of the Treasury.

You see them chasing the next free lunch, I see lobbyng. And compared to the billions spend in lobbying in the Americas or Europe, building the AU headquarters must have been pocket change. More so with backdoors.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFA_franc#History

European countries and the US have been meddling in African countries for centuries, even more blatantly (including directly toppling governments or bringing in their armies) and they have hardly "distanced" themselves from them -- and they'll do that to China for such small peanuts?

The population doesn't know better or is kept down, and the leaders do what brings money to their accounts, not to the country.

This article may be from 1988, but it seems somewhat applicable to current events.

Yep, it's mostly theater -- "oh, those pesky Chinese might spy", when they already give every bit out to others.