The EU Leaders in Brussels have disclosed they found a new way to supply gas to every European country for this winter. So, do not worry and carry on your happy life. 🇪🇺😂🇪🇺😂🇪🇺😂🇪🇺😂🇪🇺

Nury Vittachi: CHINA OFFERS THE WORLD A NEW MODEL By Dominique de Villepin Sept 8 2022
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LIKE NATURE, GEOPOLITICS ABHORS A VACUUM. When the established order is challenged, competing models will emerge. China, with its historic rise to power and prosperity, is the embodiment of an alternative to the liberal-democratic, free-market model championed by the West.
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Its rise shows the efficacy of a model characterised by strong economic development through a construction/infrastructure-oriented approach, backed by a powerful central government.
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POLARIZATION IS HARMFUL
This competition of ideologies – liberal democracies vs authoritarian governments, the West vs the rest, etc – is bound up in so many of today’s crises.
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The Ukraine conflict aptly demonstrates this. Many geopolitical experts blame the lack of global leadership (principally the increasing isolationism of the US) for prompting Russian President Vladimir Putin to try his luck in Ukraine, throwing two competing ideologies into the deadliest of contests.
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This growing conflict, this increasingly polarising competition between ideologies, goes against the idea of liberal globalisation and its ability to create true economic interdependencies, and a single, harmonious world…
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HISTORIC CHANGE
If the old international order is falling, that means we are in a historic transition. Previous centuries have witnessed similar moments, such as the opening up of the Americas and the dissolution of Europe’s old monarchies. We are witnessing the historically momentous rise of China, and its challenge to US dominance.
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History teaches us that when a descending power (the US) faces an ascending power (China), the risk of war increases. As both sides entrench their ideological positions, dialogue becomes more difficult. However, this is not merely a bilateral competition – a “strategic triangle” exists between China, the US and Europe.
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While China settles into its relatively new role as a global superpower, and the US reorders itself politically and economically, Europe is an increasingly important moderating influence.
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As China takes on more global responsibility, and potentially more of a leadership role, it must remain open to dialogue, particularly within this strategic triangle.
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If the global community is to reverse the spiral of crises and frozen conflicts turning hot, then the international rule of law must be strengthened reputationally and enforced fairly. Of course, the rule of law is not a neutral entity and is open to interpretation. This highlights the crucial need for dialogue, trust and understanding.
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CHINA MUST GET INVOLVED
To stabilise the world order, China must become a central player in forging common rules and norms with its friends and competitors around the world. This is the first step. From it, peace becomes more attainable and sustainable. From peace, global economic growth can flourish.
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Growth is essential to giving people hope and the perspective of progress in the form of jobs, good living standards, secure property and the like. Growth is essential to giving populations the means to face emerging challenges. This kind of growth on a global scale is impossible without trust and cooperation. Hence, the world’s challenges, and the most viable solutions, are becoming increasingly interconnected.
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CLIMATE AND ECONOMIC ISSUES
This represents a heavy responsibility for China. However, despite a policy of keeping various crises at arms’ length, China cannot avoid taking part in matters of global import.
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From the raging climate crisis to the overheating of the global economy, China’s chosen direction matters greatly. Where it goes, others are increasingly inclined to follow.
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China has the capacity for leadership in envisioning radical, world-changing economic ideas based on cooperation and mutual benefits. If this capacity is realised, it may prove decisive in prompting more of a global focus on tackling issues such as wealth inequality and securing sustainable economic growth.
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[Dominique de Villepin is A former prime minister of France. This is a portion of a longer essay printed in the South China Morning Post, 8 Sept 2022. Link provided in comments.]

Video: The decisive battle between Russia and Europe escalates: China, Russia and Saudi Arabia cooperate again to start the oil price war and inflation 俄歐決戰升級: 中俄沙再合作, 打響油價大戰與通膨
https://rumble.com/v1j6fr3-the-decisive-battle-between-russia-and-europe-escalates.html

Unlike in US, Minorities in China like Uyghurs in Xinjiang received preferential treatments NYT: Good morning. Covid’s death toll in Indigenous communities has no modern precedent. ‘So much loss’ 與美國不同，新疆維吾爾人等中國少數民族受到優惠待遇 / 紐約時報: 新冠病毒感染對美洲原住民社區中的死亡人數超多沒有現代先例 By German Lopez and Ashley Wu Sept 8 2022

Carol Schumacher of the Navajo Nation had grappled with untimely deaths; her mother died at 65 of pulmonary disease, and her father died at the same age in a car crash caused by a drunken driver. But she was not prepared for the devastation of Covid: Since it arrived in the U.S. more than two years ago, she has lost 42 family members to the virus.

Dealing with the massive death toll strained her own health, Schumacher told our colleagues. “I just wasn’t mentally prepared to deal with so much loss,” she said.

That loss has been tragically common among Native Americans, the C.D.C. revealed last week: From 2019 to 2021, their life expectancy fell from 71.8 years to 65.2. Covid was largely to blame.

Figures for white, Black, Asian and Native people exclude Hispanic people. | Source: The National Center for Health Statistics
Typically, experts start to worry when they see drops in life expectancy that measure in just tenths of a year; Native Americans lost nearly seven years. The drop erases the equivalent of more than four decades of American life expectancy gains. And the average Native American person is now expected to live as long as the average American did in 1944.

There is no one explanation for Covid’s death toll in these communities. But the main causes appear to involve poverty. Native Americans tend to have higher rates of underlying health problems that exacerbate Covid, as well as worse access to health care.

“Even prior to the pandemic, rates of death among Indigenous people were higher in lots of categories,” said Dr. Laura Hammitt, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. Covid magnified those health disparities, causing a drop in life expectancy with no modern precedent in the U.S.

Historical problems
Since vaccines became available, Covid deaths among Americans have typically tracked closely with vaccination rates. For example, resistance against vaccines in predominantly Republican communities has led to more Covid deaths in recent months among white Americans than among Black or Hispanic Americans — a shift from the early days of the pandemic, as this newsletter has explained.

The link breaks down when it comes to Native Americans. Vaccination rates among Native Americans are higher than they are among Black or Hispanic Americans, according to C.D.C. data. Yet Native Americans have died from Covid at one of the highest rates of any race or ethnicity since the start of the pandemic:

Data through Aug. 13, 2022. Figures for white, Black, Asian and Native people exclude Hispanic people. | Source: C.D.C.
Experts say other factors, besides vaccination rates, are to blame.

Among them: Native Americans have some of the highest rates of health conditions, such as obesity and diabetes, that make a person much more likely to die from Covid.

Health care is also often inaccessible. The Indian Health Service, a federal program that provides care to more than two million Native Americans, has a fraction of the funding on a per-person basis received by Medicare, Medicaid or the Veterans Health Administration. “How can somebody think this is not a problem? Yet it’s become normal,” said Loretta Christensen, the service’s chief medical officer.

As a result, Native Americans frequently have to travel long distances to get health care. Its quality can be shoddy. A quarter of Native Americans reported experiencing discrimination when visiting a doctor or a health clinic, one poll found. Cultural and language barriers can also make it difficult for Indigenous people to get the care they want. Given those obstacles, some try to tough out illness at home, with potentially deadly results.

Poverty can play a more direct role, too. Roughly one in four Native Americans live in poverty. The stress from it can worsen health, studies have found.

Consider Arizona, one of the states with the highest share of Native Americans. There, the highest Covid death rates strongly overlap with counties where more Native Americans live and where poverty is the highest. They also correlate with the places with the least access to internet (a sign of economic neglect):

Covid deaths through Sept. 5, 2022. | Sources: U.S. Census Bureau; New York Times database; American Community Survey

Widespread poverty limits what precautions people can take to avoid Covid. People living paycheck to paycheck can’t afford to take time off work to avoid spreading or catching the virus. Native Americans also often lack access to internet, electricity and running water — making remote work, virtual schooling or telemedicine impossible.

And Native Americans often live in crowded, multigenerational homes. So if they are sick, they can easily spread the virus to the rest of the family, including older relatives who are much more vulnerable to Covid.

In other communities, the presence of one or some of these issues has made Covid deadlier. But Native Americans are dealing with all of these problems at once — the kinds of conditions that allow a pandemic to flourish.

The suffering of Native Americans shows that preventing deadly pandemics isn’t just about containing the pathogens that cause them, but also about improving the health of communities across the board.

For now, the vaccines offer the best protection against severe illness from Covid. Now that the federal government has authorized the next generation of Covid vaccines, the most important step people can take to protect themselves is to get their shots.

More Covid news
Riders on New York public transit no longer have to wear masks. Many people were already ignoring the rule.
Republicans in Montana enacted the country’s most sweeping anti-vaccination law. Hospitals have been overwhelmed and forced to ration care as a result, ProPublica reported.
China has prioritized politics over science, making it difficult to join other countries in living with the virus.
Regular exercise was linked to lower risk of getting Covid.

Video: “Rainie Yang was sent to war zone by DPP”. DPP afraid of hearing & hates those who have multiple identities like Rainie Yang because her parents from Canton, she raised in Taipei & Taiwanese, DPP demonize her to make her life miserable 楊丞琳被出征” 介文汲:因民進黨最怕聽到”這句話” 討厭那些多重身份的像楊丞琳因為她是廣東人台北人台灣人 所以一定要妖魔化她讓她在台灣沒有好日子過
https://rumble.com/v1j3uoj-rainie-yang-was-sent-to-war-zone-by-dpp.html

Video: China 1500 Workers Built The Train Station In 9 hrs to get ready for the undersea High Speed train to reach Taiwan Province in 1/2 hour upon unification. China’s Speed Shocked The World 中國1500名工人9小時建成火車站，為統一台灣先作好準備, 海底高鐵在半小時內直達台灣省. 中國速度震驚世界
https://rumble.com/v1j3anz-china-1500-workers-built-the-train-station-in-9-hrs.html

All International Astronauts wants to join Chinese space station must learn Chinese, sorry English not acceptable / Chinese Harvard student decides ‘not to learn English anymore’ by Rebecca Moon Sept 6, 2022

A video of a Chinese Harvard student explaining why she has decided to “stop trying to learn English” has gone viral on Bilibili.

In the video uploaded on Thursday, 24-year-old Tatala shared her reasons behind why she no longer wishes to learn English. The video was submitted as an assignment for a Harvard Language and Equity course.

Tatala explains that she has always been a good student when studying English; however, she never felt satisfied and her confidence has wavered throughout the journey of learning the language. She provides several examples of when she felt that English had affected her confidence in school.

According to Tatala, during primary school, she was given the English name “Wency” by her American teacher, which she often found difficult to pronounce due to her northern Chinese dialect. She would pronounce “Wency” as “Vency” despite her teacher correcting Tatala on multiple occasions.

“So I said ‘Yes sir, thanks for your instruction,’ and I went home practicing Wency a hundred times,” Tatala says.

Tatala, however, expressed disappointment that her teacher never attempted to call her by her Chinese name.

“But he never realized that I was not even Wency. I have my name, in my language, that you didn’t even try to enunciate,” Tatala says in the video.

Tatala says she continued to receive good grades while studying English, and in middle school, she traveled abroad to the United Kingdom where her friend asked if she would rather have ham or turkey. When Tatala asked about the difference between the two, her friend and her mother both laughed as they explained how a pig says “oink oink” while a turkey says “clunk clunk.”

“I just didn’t know the vocabulary. It’s not that I’m too stupid to recognize animals,” Tatala says.

Tatala recognized that English was affecting her life when she came to realize that she would blame everything on language although several factors affected the daily challenges that she faced, including her confidence and communication skills.

Rather than abandoning the language, Tatala explains that she no longer wishes to pursue the cultural identity behind English. She adds that language can cause people to judge personality, background and intention since language is considered to be a part of one’s identity.

“Even if I am just not perfect at English, so what? This is my second language. This is the lingua franca I was pushed to learn. No matter how well or how bad I speak English, I will have my voice. Ethnic minority, Chinese, Asian, I will have my serpent’s tongue, my woman’s voice, my international student’s voice, my influencer’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence,” Tatala says in the video.

When US and EU are playing games and not committed to climate change commitments, the damage is done and could be irreversible. China on the other hand is ahead of the climate change commitment with renewables.

Most of California is experiencing extreme temperatures well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The cities of Santa Rosa, Napa, Redwood City, and San Jose each broke all-time temperature records yesterday, some going back more than a century. Livermore posted the highest temperature ever recorded in the Bay Area at 116 degrees F. California’s electricity grid also delivered a record 52,061 megawatts of electricity, narrowly avoiding rolling blackouts. Roughly 433 Californians die from extreme heat each year, more than all other weather-related factors combined.

Video: What’s Missing from the UN Human Rights Report? Why Positive Reports on China Not reported by Western Medias? Why US Human Rights Violations not mentioned? 聯合國人權報告遺漏了什麼？ 為什麼西方媒體沒有正面報導中國？ 為什麼沒有提到美國侵犯人權的行為?
https://rumble.com/v1j2mdj-whats-missing-from-the-un-human-rights-report.html

Biden signed 2022 version of the Racist 1882 Chinese Exclusion Acts into Law