by Thorsten J. Pattberg for the Saker blog
Thousands of China collaborators are under surveillance. Some are on the brink of ruin, others don’t even know what’s in store for them
There comes a time during or shortly after the academic training of every “Student of China” when he frequently runs into one of the many agents of Western anti-China state security.
They are adverse hostile forces, they run a complete background-check on you, and then they‘ll make you a simple offer: You either produce anti-Chinese content for the West, or they‘ll mark you as anti-democratic and enemy of freedom, a traitor. In that case, you’ll never find work in the West again.
IMAGE 1 Those who deal with the Chinese will lose their laughter
And if you make a big fuss about it and cry coercion or blackmail, they are gonna start decomposing you.
Like most young students back then, I, too, was completely ignorant about the inner workings of Western world hegemony. And, like the idiot I always was, I threw myself heedlessly into “China Studies” at a respective University in the United Kingdom, Edinburgh to be exact.
Immediately, the conceited profs and lecturers, they taught us the horrors of Han chauvinism, the horrors of Qing China and the horrors of the Maoists and the horrors against the poor people of Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
When I looked it up, those were all former British colonies and/or places of interest to the British Crown. We were told LIES by the very British people whose soldiers raped, looted and colonized China, and were now angry that China somehow stood its ground and survived.
I do not expect you to believe at first what I am about to tell you. I would not have believed it myself, back then I mean, before I joined some of the many “Studies” invented by the Western Empire of LIES.
“China Studies” is not about China. It could be, but it is not. It is warfare against China. To keep China down. To sabotage her. To control her people and her history.
In this war, it is the West or you perish. Joining the enemy, China, is a capital crime. Have you ever wondered why there are no pro-China talking heads in the books, in the papers or on telly? It is because pro-China people in “China Studies” were the enemy. They didn’t make it through graduation, they weren’t hired, etc..
Our common sense is often betrayed by what sociologists call ‘the survivor bias’: We believe that since all we hear or read about China is negative, this must be sure proof that China is a very nasty place. What we fail to see, however, is that all the negative stuff we heard and read about China was the product of just 1 “China Studies” graduate for every 1,000,000 people or so of the general Western population. Nobody who was pro-China survived the selection process or came anywhere near central power.
Everyone the UK authorities detect who doesn’t match the profile of “a future China-basher” is not selected for graduation or a top post. It is as simple as that.
When I decided to expand from “Sanskrit Studies” and do my own research on Buddhism in mainland China, I must have triggered UK anti-China state security. I spare you the whole process; safe to say it was unpleasant. To their credit, they tried to talk me out of it. I declined an exchange year in US-Taiwan, even for money. Then they gave me a scholarship to British Hong Kong, but I declined that as well. I wanted to go to mainland China, on my own.
This was the end of my career in the humanities before it started. I see it now clearly, in hindsight. I didn’t stand a chance. But back then, I did not believe human beings, intelligent scholars, could be so violent and cruel. I had no idea.
Unbeknownst to me back then, I landed on anti-China state security lists of the British MI6, the German BND, and the American CIA. It basically amounts to flying with SSSS ‘Secondary Screening Security Selection’, the complete banishment from Western clubs, organizations, the media and so on. They spread rumors, call your employers. It is no fun. Edinburgh put me on the watch list, sent me huge bills, and put my degree on hold for two years.
My supervisors and lecturers turned from sweet and caring people into monsters. And my classmates began to disassociate from me, of course, to save their skin. That is normal survival mode, I guess. That said, none of them turned out to be a particularly happy fellow either. They wanted to study China for their Love of China. Now they were made to hate it, hate it, hate all about it. [Some made peace with China, but the dreadful indoctrination at ‘anti-China University’ can never be fully erased.]
See, in Britain the students often think they are some kind of free spirits. They spent 20 to 24 years locked away in compulsory education, because a university degree is, after all, very much compulsory! So they graduate with an MA or PhD in “China Studies” and they think like Uh, ah… China bad! But that isn’t so brilliant, is it, free spirit? British compulsory higher education feels exactly like the compulsory BBC, exactly like the compulsory Monarchy, exactly like compulsory taxes.
“China Studies” is one of the many Western-invented “Studies” that were tools during the Imperialist era and today probably shouldn’t continue. However, this ingrained, state-sponsored, all-consuming British hatred for China and the China-hands truly stands out, I think, and the pressure on Western students to conform to the British version of Chinese history is damaging and painful.
To cement London’s claim to British world empire over the Chinese, the government is shipping and flying in hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong Chinese and Taiwan Chinese and Token Chinese. In the government’s twisted calculations, this will also lend “China Studies” its fake legitimacy.
It would be better if the English send hundreds of thousands of Englishmen to Mongolia and Shanghai and Sichuan and what not, you know, just like when the English back in the days took Jamestown or Sydney. But this one with the Chinese in England now is different, you see.
You don‘t believe it? Well, the servile nature of the Chinese is well documented and universally acknowledged in Britain and the West. We have 500 years of experimenting with Chinese in our colonies. The Chinese diasporas in America and Europe are so well-behaved and… well, demoralized, they do not pose any serious threat to Western hegemony. [As long as we eliminate any emerging leaders.]
What does pose a real threat, however, are Western intellectuals. One single complainant British, one single bold German, one single cunning Jew are far more dangerous than tens of millions of Chinese ingrates. In short, the Western overlords fear internal revolt, never an external one.
That’s why Western anti-China state security is directing most of its violence internally. The City of London and the Government in Westminster, for example, give billions of their war budget for the creation of extremely few Western “China Experts” who torture their peers, assassinate their critics, and cannot be removed.
In the entire world, there are perhaps 50 to 100 such Western “China Experts.” They form the real Government of China, and they live outside of China. You have read that correctly: That government in China over there in China, the “Communist Party of China” or CPC, is considered illegitimate in the West. The West’s ideal “Government of China” is a Western government, and it is run by Western “China Experts,” administered by Western agents and bureaucrats, and it is plentifully staffed with pro-Western Chinese serviles.
I know, it shouldn’t be like this. But it is, it is.
IMAGE 2 Those who help China will be terrorists by association
That is why China’s influence on “China Studies” is not tolerated. China isn’t even consulted. China’s own degrees [for Western students] are not even accredited in Britain or elsewhere in America and Europe. What, you didn’t know that?
We basically learn from the cradle of “China Studies” that the Chinese are oppressed, that the Chinese commit genocide, that the Chinese are evil communists, or evil tyrants, or backward people who eat dogs and kill little girls.
Our “China Studies” professors are state officials [in Germany: Staatsbeamte, in Britain: Public Servants]. They are part of the anti-China state security apparatus. They wished they would also be selected and globally exaggerated as one of the “China Experts,” but few are ever given that much power. Most of them live in constant fear of internal investigation, intelligence surveillance or meeting with Chinese people. So they must prohibit their students of “China Studies” to study in China [unless supervised by the powers in Washington, Berlin, Brussels, London]. Oh and, yes, they also ban Chinese newspapers in their institutes.
Chinese leaders cannot be discussed, at all. Everything has to be reduced to one evil autocrat. Chinese influence is a no-no [except the plight of Chinese dissidents]. British crimes in Asia are anathema. Instead, they basically tell us that all that Chinese leaders are doing is reading Lenin and Karl Marx. Then, they prohibit the mentioning of Lenin and Marx being Jews, an even bigger no-no. Then they tell us that the Chinese are putting other Chinese, who are called Uyghurs, in penal camps for no reason other than manufacturing fake foreign brands. As a general rule, Western students are trained to hate China, hand over fist.
And then there is the paranoia about the Chinese language, oh boy! None of the Professors of “China Studies” speak fluent Chinese. So they discredit fluent Chinese speakers. “Knowing Chinese does not qualify for a British degree in China Studies,” they kept telling us.
This “anti-China language diplomacy” worked well for the British for 99 years in their colony Hong Kong. No Englishman of rank had ever lowered himself to the study of Cantonese. The Americans, too, do not learn the languages of their conquered people. It is just one of those mental illnesses.
Chinese names are considered incorrect and must be put to Western order. Chinese terms are considered eye-sore and must be shunned. Gigantic government-sponsored propaganda campaigns are under way in America and Europe that warn their population that Chinese language is polluting the brains of our young children.
This was a University of the British Crown, mind you. There are intelligent lecturers and researchers around. Lots of Chinese house slaves. Yet I found, to my horror, that none of them can be a friend or hand of China. Not in the West. It is too dangerous. And nobody trusts anybody. It is the same with our China-journalists and China-businessmen. Western anti-China state security and its informants are everywhere. Colleagues inform on colleagues.
China is now the professed enemy of the West. It doesn’t matter whether you live in the UK, in Canada, in the USA, in Australia, Germany or France. Those Western governments cling to world hegemony and are going to intensify the purges of pro-China persons in our universities, in the professions and on the Internet. How much time do you think YOU have left until they put your name and whereabouts on a China-hands watch list?
Now, let us assume that back then in Britain, I had impeccable foresight, and that I was able to set into motion country-changing events. I knew I would not survive this. Yet, I could have planted all this that is about to come forth and unfold.
And this is you now, too.
You must have that foresight. Prepare for the worst. Because if I contact you, that means they have a file on you too…
END.
Dr. Pattberg is a German writer and the author of The Xin-Civilization and Shove Your Democracy Up Your… [redacted].
Nothing is more dangerous than a pompous, self-righteous ‘academic’, scourge of the globe; they have absolutely no respect for opposite opinions and intimidate those that differ.
I don’t think that matters anymore, johnm.
Something is brewing. In the spirit world.
For example, I have 3 good friends whose young sons, in their late teens, and who don’t know each other, all want to go to China. They see the writing on the wall: go east, young men.
I also think that the Deep State in the West senses that as well. And because they don’t want to lose their power, they’ll do close to whatever it takes to hold on to what’s slipping away from them.
https://tinyurl.com/meet-the-deep-state
Based on my own life time of experience I am very inclined to trust the author of this article to be reading the situation with regard to the West’s attitude to China studies accurately. The over riding and dominant concern that motivates the rulers of the capitalist West is to obfuscate the fact that Mao was a positive and good influence, who was capable of standing up to the West. So “demonize Mao” and all that he represents is an ongoing propaganda campaign driven by deep irrational fear and hatred.
How many decent people in the West can withstand this relentless rain of lies regarding Mao? He was actually credited by a reactionary Chinese scholar in the West as being the greatest Chinese poet of the 20th century. This must say something about Mao’s integrity. The point that is most desperately avoided is that the Chinese revolution was, and still is, driven by authentic heart and soul. And its government is not an authoritarian dictatorship. It is authoritative, meaning motivated by the heart, in effect a genuine socialist form of democracy. And the people tend to trust their Govt and have a high degree of happiness.
This is all enough to make me see that, culturally and politically, if not spiritually, the political issue of “class” is still very relevant and descriptive. I think of class, in the Marxist sense, as being an issue that reveals the dysfunctional mutually alienated relationship that exists between the Western mind and the body, which is a largely unrecognized psychological problem in the West. This alienation between the mind and the body, is acted out en mass, via the issue of class. The mind holds its illusions of separation from organic life and clings to them with a degree of ego driven desperation ( I call this the bourgeois imperative – NATO) The lived experience of the common masses and working class is where the real truth is to be found, that being the objective life of the body. Mao’s cultural revolution and back to the land mass campaign was his attempt to heal this split (between city and country – i.e., mind and body) Which goes a long way to explain why the West is determined to demonize that revolution also. For me this connection holds the real explanation for the pathology of Western “China Studies.” Essentially organized fear ridden denial of an emerging new world. An ego trip.
Never mentioned, Mao was the first leader to successfully remove foreigners from ruling and occupying China since 1644. The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) were the last pure Chinese rulers. The Qing Dynasty (1636-1912) was a foreign peoples (Manchu) which ruled China after conquering the Ming. The Europeans controlled the Qing Dynasty at gunpoint in the 1800’s and looted China for over a hundred years (Century of Humiliation). Mao inherited a bankrupt and destroyed country. From this Mao set the foundation of what is China today. For example, the West never mentions that when Mao inherited China, the population literacy rate was under 16%. When Mao Ze Dong died in 1976, the Country’s literacy rate was over 88% and educated. This fact alone is the reason why Europe (1990) and then America (2001) outsourced their manufacturing to China to take advantage of wage arbitrage. Think about it. Why didn’t the West go to India instead of China? India is “democratic”, has roughly the same population (workers) and even lower wages….the reason is Chinese labor is skilled and literate. Also never mentioned is Mao doubled China’s life expectancy (35 – 68) and had the best prosperity growth rate in recorded history:
Germany developed at 33% per decade from 1880-1914.
Japan at 43% from 1874-1929
USSR at 54% between 1928-58.
Mao’s China was 64% between 1952-72.
Westerners have no respect for those who were first in line at the name counter.
“This was the end of my career in the humanities before it started. I see it now clearly, in hindsight. I didn’t stand a chance. But back then, I did not believe human beings, intelligent scholars, could be so violent and cruel. I had no idea.”
As stated previously in the comments I believe this author is authentic. The quoted paragraph is something I had to go through as well. Not as an academic just as someone who thought if you do what you believe is right and best for people things work out. Not so much here in the West nor too many other places I imagine.
Enjoyed this article. Thank you. The anti-China stance in the US is based on fear, ignorance and propaganda(in my opinion).
p.s. I will happily go on their list bc at least that list means you/I aren’t the same as them.
I visited China in 2008 and my co-workers here in the U.S. kept telling me to be careful because if the Chinese government finds out I’m Christian they would arrest me and throw me in a mobile execution ambulance I swear lol. My point is the demonization of China here in America is absurd. When I went to Tiananmen Square we had originally planned to visit Mao’s Memorial Hall but there were thousands of people waiting on line to pay their respect to Mao and it would have taken us many hours waiting on line. The Chinese absolutely love their history and their past leaders and they consider Mao for better or worse almost like the savior of China. Were it not for Mao, China would have been split into four countries, controlled by the west. Traveling can give you a first hand experience of how things truly are in different parts of the world but the inner journey to achieve a more peaceful heart and mind is a destination we must all strive to reach.
“they have a file on you too…”
Do you know something??
I couldnt give a monkeys cuss if they do. Good luck to them. I do as I please, talk to whom I want, and say what I deem I need to. And I dont give a dman about “files”.
I dont doubt the veracity of the authors opinion and statements about modern academics of the collective West, but you see, it’s not just China, or Russia, or anything else specific really.
It’s about the narrative. In all fields, they hold the power to construct the narrative, and it’s one that reflects their inner self. That might be to try to influence minds, shape perceptions, feed to their masters to gain approval, or just a desperate need to have everyone agree with them to give them the idea that they are correct, they do have the right idea, they must have the correct narrative, because everyone agrees with them.
They are like this in everything. Try doing a coure in the climate sciences, and providing evidence that there is no unusual global warming, that this is part of a normal sun cycle, and see how far you get.
I once, just for the fun of it and to prove a point, in a course on evolution, submitted an essay showing all the problems with neo-Darwinian natural selection. Things like the problem of irreducible complexity. Other solid science. I provided good references. I got, as I had known I would, a Fail. When I challenged the academic for his reasoning, and the logical faults – since I knew there were none – he said “I guess {sic} I just thought you couldnt have understood the course”.
I laughed, tore up the essay and threw it in his bin and walked out.
It’s not just one thing or another, it’s part of a major flaw in their minds, their characters, their perceptions, their emotions.
Personally I’m coming more and more to think they dont belong on this earth at all.
I hope you don’t believe that complexity cannot be reduced.
Well, the complexity of a complex biological system cannot be. Try reducing the complexity of the eye, and see if it still works. In Biology, what it means is that you have systems which are very complex with many contributory parts, and every single one has to work exactly as it does in order for the final product to do what it should. And “random point mutation and pressure to survive” cannot produce that. Proven mathematically. Which pretty much brings down Darwinism. Not that you can get the dyed in the wool academics of any University to see that.
In fact, since Advanced Systems Theory shows us that a complex system which has broken down cannot be fixed, I’d say it probably applies everywhere. the only way to “reduce” complexity would be to make it simple, and that has to be done by starting again anew.
@ Pamela
Lol, Adam and Eve didn’t have a belly button!!! That solves everything Id say. But If not try the book Climate Change The Work of God.
No objectivity in universities
Cheers
Yet they are somehow still here, to keep giving the devil its due, to be irrational longer than you can remain solvent, to be a thorn in the side of your neck, to be a challenge until the gods arrive to help clean up their mess, seems like forever to me, and it just might be.
Yes, they are still there, and in fact, in greater numbers and strength. We see this everywhere where there are systems of hierarchy – the selective system is open to invasion by a lesser person, who sets a pattern for his/her “like / similar” to enter following the pattern established as being present from the formation of molecules up to social groupings and on into the Universe ; like / similar will always gravitate to and form the strongest bonds to that which is like / similar to itself.
It’s a sort of “there goes the neighbourhood” phenomenon.
It’s so essential to get the beginnings of any system right, but since that thought is furthest from anyone’s mind, errors minor at first, slowly increase in size and magnify until they have become huge and un correctable.
So it is here. A lot has to do with the hive mind I suspect. Let that start to form, and your institution is pretty much gone.
I’d love to see some Western University Humanities Dept have staff member who openly stated homosexuality was not a normal sexual behaviour, and that statistically people of negro descent would be less skilled at mathematics, and just see wht the Hive Mind of the Staff room does. Individual thinkers of integrity?? Hah, sure.
Very obvious, the Empire never went away. It just changed shape and assumed the disguise of neoliberalism. Domination and exploitation are still the name of the game.
People in the Global South have been brainwashed over centuries to think the West is superior, and to try to be like them which they never can, no matter how fine an English accent they speak with, or how many cosmetic whiteners they put on their skin. The colonial Masters form an exclusive club.
So, the best and the most capable from the colonies have been trained to despise themselves and to disparage and betray their own people as an endless and unfulfillable rite of passage. A bit like the house slave versus the field slave in America.
I have no intention of criticizing this article in its main thesis, but I read it & am left wondering: well, what on Earth did you expect? It’s understandable that when a student, average age 18-21 years, one may be naive, we all are at that age & anyone who claims they weren’t is fooling themselves. But when I was in business school in the UK, I had already developed fairly radical anti-capitalist viewpoint & I knew I couldn’t openly express them if I hoped to graduate. I didn’t have to make any moral compromises, just follow the curriculum, which for the most part, covered technical-mathematical issues related to finance & accounting, costs of logistics, distribution & such. The only potentially controversial subject we covered was costs of labour, but even this was approached from a technical standpoint as to how wages are offset against inflation, GDP, etc. etc. Boring stuff. I just wanted the diploma because I thought it would land me a half decent job, & it did. In the west, naivety will destroy you, you have to play the system. The hatred for China in the west, esp. the English speaking west, Anglosphere, has become intense in the last decade as China has aligned with Russia & made it clear they are out to build a new fair world order. The Atlanticist west is outraged because they assumed, as Mike Pompeo said, that when the US/UK offshored their industries in the 1970s/80s, that this would make China “become like us.” In other words, they expected China to become an outright vasal, & after the defeat of the US in the Vietnam war, this was critical for western hegemony in Asia. But China played the game on the west, & used the capital injection to develop their country. Hilary Clinton appeared on TV & stated that the US investment in China starting in the 1970s was the biggest strategic mistake that the US government has ever made. Wisdom in retrospect. The US/UK believed they could subvert China with money, China turned the tables on them & now is the leading industrial economy in the world. It is no surprize at all then that all western countries, all institutions, including educational, will be geared towards China’s destruction. At this point for the west this is existential, because for the first time in 500 years, a region of the world is on the verge of developing a self-sustaining economic order that does not need the western hemisphere for anything, that is what China & Russia through the BRICS & SCO, the BRI & EAU are achieving. True independence. The colonial era is truly coming to an end. But the colonial powers will not take that sitting down, of course they will attempt to prevent this from succeeding, they will invest everything they have into the effort, which is why Germany & EU economies are consciously ruining themselves for the cause of the “greater good”, war with the barbarian east. This for them, is a war for civilization. For China, & Russia, it is a war for existence. In the west, no one who breaks rank will be tolerated, no one, & we see that the west is rapidly descending into totalitarianism. The value of this article is in that is reveals the earlier roots of that totalitarian descent.
The Chinese decided to beat the West at their own game playing by their rules.
They are on their way to win, not just for them but for all of us.
They are not there yet. There is many slip between cup and lip, as the saying goes.
They still have nuclear weapons and a willingness to use it and a track record of using it.
Well the whole world is like that including the many vassals and stooges in many countries.
When the wind turns you will be surprised how those very same people one thought were fully bought out will turn.
Even those who in their assessment think that resistance is futile that it’s better to compromise to make space for themselves will suddenly become torchbearers of the new order . Prime example Medvedev.
As the reality in different countries changes expect more of it. It’s Human nature to ally with the new pecking order.
You got to work with their reasoning. The long rope given by Putin as well as their own actions in last 30 years in the world has destroyed their soft power and the morality of their stance. The more you let them expose themselves while slowly escalating the pressure the better. They will expose themselves not only to the world but eventually to their own masses.
Once moral legitimacy is gone then if defeat comes there is no going back..
I am going to give a sad example of what it means for a poor and colonized country like Peru to oppose the West.
The deposed president of Peru was directly opposed to the perverse values of the West: homosexuality, abortion, pedophilia and industrial development. He was an atheist and a communist, he defended Catholic principles!!! to scandal of Europe and USA. Result for him, 25 years in jail. I can’t imagine the fate of China if in a similar case.
The reality is that the West is failing day by day and sinking into an unrecoverable cess pool of despair and death, whilst China is growing and moving forward to a brighter future.
Why is the West failing ? It’s because of its ‘leaders’, all who actively hate their countries and their peoples. The west’s biggest enemy is its leaders (and the compliant masses ?)
China is not perfect and has many faults BUT its leaders are Chinese and want what is best for China and its peoples. This is called socialism or maybe communism by some but at least its not selling out your country and people to personally profit and gain power.
It’s probably no comfort to you, but it’s as bad in Russian studies. I do research and spent an entire year in 1920 doing research on something called”Putinism” and “hybrid war”. I was working for a British officer with Afghan and Africa experience leading “police battalions”. He made his way through some program, and now worked for the Oxymoron Think Tank. Oodles of NGO’s and agents stream out from these grad snakepits, and this after a lifetime as an English prof wrestling with the post-modernists. Cut to the chase, I kept two set of books. In one,in my mind, I devoured Lavrov’s interviews, studied the war doctrines, was impressed by the powerful state structure erected in Russia, and found in the Western doctrine– postmodernism. You could fight a war in a” grey zone” entirely through symbolism swimming in a universe of discourse. Don’t get me started.
Stalinism goes to academia. Brave lad.
Wow, or woe rather what a picture you paint for us Dr. Pattberg of the world of education. My own experience as being one not of your world at all having never gone to University or any school of higher education I had the chance of meeting an academic of very high standing. After listening to my testimony and revealing to him some profound info on climate change being the work of God he blurted out ;so there is a God after all.’
As an academic he is very proud of the fact that he is an analyst and analyzing everything including ones character. He lives by the saying
Believe Nothing
Trust no One
Question Everything
I suppose that’s the mark of a true academic?
He later said to me after some reflection these words ‘God is an absentee landlord over his creation?’
The man is of British extraction and for me the questions it raises about the ignorance of his knowledge of the bible is well truly perplexing. He even blurted out to me questioning the bible as a book of manmade ideas thinking it full of to many contradictions to be taken seriously.
Did he ever get the shock of his life and continues to lol!
Cheers and thanks Dr. Pattberg your essays have had a profound effect upon me.
There is not only China studies but India studies, Africa studies etc. etc.
It is no accident that after 1991 aRussian studies departments in the US virtually closed down because it was felt there was no need for it since the West had won.
The situation in India is far worse. It is one of the reasons why India cannot openly support Russia. A big chunk of India’s elite is firmly in the West’s grip because of successful brainwashing over generations. All information that Indians receive about the outside word comes via Western media and think tanks. This is especially true about information on China. India has barely a dozen people who can be considered to have any in-depth knowledge of China. As others on this thread have mentioned ***studies is designed to give an academic gloss to a process of making people despise their own cultures and values. It is extremely corrosive and so far, successful.
All this will change when it is blatantly obvious that the West is not the power that it claims it is- militarily, intellectually, socially, politically, economically and in every field, except looting and plunder. My guess is that this will lead the West into a crisis such as we have not seen for a long time. Internecine strife, witch hunts, pogroms, death squads, poverty, all the ills suffered by the Thirld Worldwill all be the order of the day.
As for those in the former colonies that considered the West to be something to emulate, hopefully most will just shrug their shoulders and move on but quite a few will have nervous breakdowns as they see the edifice on which they have built their worldview crumble before their eyes.
An imam in US of African American ancestry a Cornell Universitygraduate who studied in 3 years in religious studies after that in a religious Institute in New Jersey and then another 6 years in Iran. He was fluent in Quranic Arabic, in spoken arabic and Farsi. Being of academic bent of mind he enrolled for a PhD in a top University in the city he lived in the US..
As he advanced in his thesis he started having problems. His guide abandoned him. The next one insisted that he change the topic he did that and later on insisted that he spend a year in Syria. He refused as he was not only fluent in Arabic but also was an Imam leading a congregation of Muslims from Lebanon and Iran and many of them with high education from their respective lands and fluent both in Arabic as well as deep knowledge of Islam as well as Arabic literature.
Parts of Syria could have been dangerous for a Shia Imam . Plus his employment as an Imam wouldn’t let him go away for so long.
They played all kinds of tricks, from stopping stipend to not compensating for housing etc. But he prevailed under the impression that no matter what his academic performance will push him to his goal.
Unfortunately nothing of the sort happened. They refused to let him present his thesis he filed a court case for harassment and preventing him from completing his thesis and this took one and half year of hearings and won it.
He went back to the university and when he finally submitted his thesis they wouldn’t acknowledge it. He threatened to file a case again.
His lawyer( he was sent as messenger from the university) finally told him that he can keep winning in courts but they will not let him complete his PhD. It’s better if he abandons the idea.
He subsequently went for further religious studies in Iran and simultaneously enrolled in a PhD program in Tehran university and got his PhD in Arabic and returned to the same congregation after 5 years.
It is remarkable to read the 24 comments in response to the special perspective of Dr Pattberg — they are all wheat and no chaff. Special mention to Pamela and masr for their contributions. To have arrived at 1945 with so little and to be where they are today — China’s progression has been unique and it is gratifying that this is being recognized by the world at large, as we saw this week in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom has changed enormously since I was there as an American architect in the late 70s — perhaps I can see it again along with the great built monuments of the Islamic world.
Reuters reports China will drop the Petrodollar at the Saudi meeting.
ARAMCO reaction anyone?
Xi has set in motion planet wide changes – the fever nightmare of MI6,BND, CIA. The City of London likely has new orders for Sunak. And all those British Uni’s simply failed!
https://www.reuters.com/world/saudi-arabia-gathers-chinas-xi-with-arab-leaders-new-era-ties-2022-12-09/
“Because if I contact you, that means they have a file on you too…”
Some here might think files are funny.
A colleague who jumped the Wall 5 months before it fell related how the STASI Files were released.
There are 17 kilometers of files in bunkers. One had to sign a form that no matter what they found in their file, under no circumstances start a civil war. His Dad’s file was full of the closest friends reports over years!
Maybe the Author knows something about this?
Now that Musk is releasing all the Twitter files just imagine the anger!