Do you remember when the “Bic Banana” came out? I do.

It was big and bright yellow, and all of us just wanted to have one to do our homework with.

Shortly after that came “Maxi skirts” which was the death blow to the mini-skirt fad of the late 1970’s. It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that my mother threw away her white go-go boots.

…

The year was in the early 1990’s. And I was working as a contractor at a electronics company that made high end military systems. Well, one day, I went to my boss and asked him for a raise. He said, “let me think about it”.

The next day he called me into his office. He accused me of being a fraud and a fake. He said that no one could find any background on me. And he spent perhaps the next two hours berating me up and down.

I left the office shaken.

Long story short, I made a few calls and got the entire mess all straightened out. But, you know, the damage was already done.

I came in wanting a raise, and left just happy that I had a job.

…

One thing that I used to love to do was crunch up aluminum foil into balls and toss them at the kitty cats to play with. They really enjoyed that game.

…

Oh, yeah. I have been listening a lot to B-b-b-b babymetal lately.

The lyrics to the songs suggest multiple song writers, as some of the songs are so very simple (Give me chocolate) while others at multi-levels deep.

Like Megitsune メギツネ.

Babymetal is a stage show; a production. Unlike the West, it’s not really a bunch a kids in a garage that got a hit record and a following, but a thought out and choreographed entertainment system.

If you read the subtitles to Megitsune メギツネ, you see that the song is all about how some women are actresses; “shape shifters” that follow a system of “seven techniques” to achieve their ultimate desires, goals, objectives… and purpose.

A female fox.

HUSH – HUSH: Pentagon Orders “COMBAT PAY” For U.S. Troops – UKRAINE

Nation Hal Turner 29 July 2023

The Pentagon has ordered COMBAT PAY for U.S. troops serving in . . . UKRAINE. Here’s the official memo:

This begs the questions:

1) Why are US Troops inside Ukraine at all, AND;

2) If the only US Troops in Ukraine are “Advisors” then why Combat Pay?

(HT Personal Opinion:   I’m going to go out on a limb here and speculate . . . . I think the reason for this memo is that US troops ARE in combat in Ukraine and we ARE at war with Russia even though it is undeclared.)

What screams “I’m upper class” in Japan?

First, my impression of Japanese upper class is that it tends to whisper.

We spent a day in one of the hot spring bathhouses up in Hakone. At dinner everybody got drunk, and at some stage the wall to the next room was slid away and two very drunk parties became one.

In that other party there was an old geezer that seemed to have the time of his life. Rolling about on the floor, laughing and pointing his finger at us westerners. We had no problem with that, we beat him at poker and won maybe 20 yen 🙂

Next day we were extremely hung over. While waiting for our taxi, a runner came and said: “Nomura-san would like to thank you for a most successful evening yesterday and since you are going to Kyoto he asks if it is OK if he arranges for one of his friends to give you a guided tour of the city tomorrow?”

Of course we said yes and sent our thanks.

Next morning at breakfast a very old man in very traditional clothes appeared at our hotel. He was totally unassuming like David Bowie who just appeared at the front desk and mildly said, “Good morning, I am David”. But you could see from the hotel staff that he was somebody. They even started to treat us differently.

We took the tour. It was amazing. He took us to temples and gardens that were not open to the public, and he was extremely knowledgeable. Then he asked if he would be allowed to invite us to his home for dinner.

Yes he was.

His home was almost empty. But large. He had a large collection of original woodprints that he showed us. His wife, a very refined woman, had a degree in art history from the Sorbonne in Paris. The staff moved about like ghosts. He told us that he came from one of the really old Samurai families, but when Japan started modernizing, his family went into textiles and made a fortune.

We asked him what he did when he was not guiding westerners. He said that he collected 19th century sailing yachts. He had one in Newport, one in Monaco on the Riviera and one in Hawaii, and they all had crews that stood by in case he felt like sailing.

To this day I do not have any clue whom we met, but his friend up in Hakone that set us up was a Nomura. And they are bankers, right. Unless he was a Nomura written with different signs.

What was the greatest single cause of the erosion of the Chinese aristocracy and its power?

Chinese people don’t care about ancestry like Europeans do; there is no aristocracy in China, or everyone is descended from an aristocrat.

British proverb: It takes three generations to make a gentleman or aristocracy.

The Chinese have a saying, “Fu bu guo san dai”, which means wealth never survives three generations.

• No hereditary aristocratic after the Zhou dynasty, interrupted by the policies of the Qin dynasty; 皇帝輪流做，明天到我家，基本是這個情況。
• No hereditary power elite after the Tang Dynasty, interrupted by the imperial examination system;
• No hereditary landowners after PRC statehood, interrupted by CPC land reform.

But after 1949, where was the space for the old aristocracy to survive?

Even the cadres of the CPC are not aristocrats. They went from muddy farm labourers to suits in short order, and were no aristocracy’s noble temperament at all. / 中共建政才70多年，從泥腿子洗腳上岸才幾天呀？中共領導層上一代誰不是農民出身？這麼短的時間如何產生貴族？

China went through a Maoist communist revolution. Who calls himself a fucking aristocrat? He will be sent to the remote countryside to be re-educated by the poor peasants!

As we all know, Xi Jinping once worked as an ordinary peasant labourer in Liangjiahe Village, Yanchuan County, Shaanxi Province.

Who’s the nicest celebrity you’ve ever met?

This happened last month, June 2017. I met this man.(The one on the left)

Image source: selfie.

Know who he is? You might be thinking that he’s some random Chinese guy.

Okay, I’ll tell his name. Carl Pei.

Haven’t heard of his name anywhere right?

Okay, heard of this mobile company?

Yes, it’s Oneplus. He’s one of the two co-founders of that company. I had met him in Bangalore, one plus experience showroom when he was traveling around for one plus 5 promotion.

One plus, being one of the best mobile company in the world, after Apple and Samsung he hasn’t made himself famous. In the generation where people become entrepreneurs to gain name and fame, this guy

• has no Wikipedia page about himself
• He doesn’t own a mansion. He rents an AirBNB room for a month and keeps travelling.
• He doesn’t own any posh cars. Travels only in Uber.
• He wears one plain black round neck t-shirt.
• He was sitting like he was one among us and talking about one plus phones.
• Not rude, not loud, spoke softly.
• He posed with everyone who asked for a selfie.

He had also arranged for free, unlimited ice cream, (Häagen Dazs!!!!) at that event.

It was such a nice experience. 🙂

Best thing was, the next day was my birthday. 🙂

American Hedge Fund CEO Moves Entire Company to China in 2023

In today’s video we share the story of Taylor Ogan of Snow Bull Capital and why he moved his hedge fund from the US to China and is still optimistic about Chinese Innovation in 2023.

As a person who grew up in a poor family, how does it feel to be finally rich and successful in life? And how did you get to this point?

As a teenager in the late 80s there was this show on TV called Roseanne.

(Source: ABC Television)

I watched a few episodes but had very little interest in these middle-aged (aka “OLD”) people deal with their rebellious teenagers and unending money problems. The TV family was struggling, but I didn’t think they were poor. The parents worked. They owned their house. They seemed like a normal family with a big helping of TV drama and family dysfunction. As a teenager, I thought my family was doing just fine.

1. My parents owned their 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house with a mortgage, of course. I had my own room. My brother had his own room and bathroom.
2. At 16, I was given my family’s beater, a Ford sedan, to drive. When the backseat caught on fire due to a faulty muffler, I used my birthday and Christmas money and my parents chipped in to buy a used Japanese sports car. It wasn’t fast but it was cool. How did my parents afford car insurance for a new teenage driver? More on that later.
3. I was a straight A student and had been accepted to a top in-state college. I got a mix of scholarships, grants and loans, but it didn’t matter. My parents made up any financial shortfalls and gave me $300/month allowance for food/groceries/gas which was way more than I needed. Where did they get the money? Not my problem.

30 years later, Roseanne has been rebooted (now called The Conners), and I start watching the show with more interest. Now I am now middle-aged with teenagers, but my life looks nothing like theirs. I semi-retired at 40. I’m wealthier than I ever thought possible. My kids (so far) have stayed out of trouble. They attend elite private high schools. We travel the world. I own both of my dream cars. I have no neurotic family members.

I start having flashbacks about the show’s original storyline and my own life at the time, and I realized that my childhood was closer to the Conner’s than I thought. Like the Conners, my family appeared to be middle class on the surface (i.e., homeowners with good jobs), but my parents were always struggling financially in large part because they were helping less fortunate/capable family members. My parents bought their house when I was born, and the house was the center of their financial and emotional well-being. They lived there my entire life. All important family gatherings were held there.

1. My mother worked as a waitress and my dad was a door-to-door salesman. His clientele were restaurant and bar patrons in rough neighborhoods. They worked a lot. They argued a lot—probably about money.
2. As a young child, I would accompany my mother at the diner since childcare was an issue. I sat quietly in a booth while she worked her shift. When I got older (5th grade), I walked home after school to an empty house. The key was under the doormat. I did homework and watched TV.
3. Unlike my kids now who have enrichment programs, private tutors, private coaches, private college counselors, and of course highly involved (borderline helicopter) parents, I did all my school work and college applications on my own.
4. Throughout our lives, my parents tapped into home equity to get out of financial jams. They refinanced the house to put me through college. My dad would regularly run up 6 figures of credit card debt with up to 30% interest. They refinanced the house repeatedly with mortgage rates > 10%.
5. My parents had very little savings and never invested a cent in stocks or mutual funds. There were no IRAs, 401Ks, etc. They were on social security and Medicare later in life.
6. Whenever they came into some money, they would blow it—usually by bailing out a relative in trouble, sometimes by making a bad investment. They each at some point bought a junker “dream” car that turned into a money pit. My dad bought a “classic” Mercedes and my mother bought a “classic” MG. Both were worthless.
7. I was on the free school lunch program, but it never occurred to me that it was income based. I just thought lunch was included.
8. We owned a working TV which sat on top of a non-working TV. If you’re a fan of Jeff Foxworthy, you know what that means.
9. I started driving when I was 16, but I didn’t know I had no insurance until I started insuring myself in college. My parents happily let me drive without insurance.
10. We also didn’t have any health insurance. Seeing the doctor, dentist, optometrist were on an as-needed basis. Something better be broken. Forget about preventative care except for the free eye and dental exams I received at school. I didn’t know health insurance was a societal norm until I got my first job out of college.
11. I got all my immunizations at the free county clinic. I also had my cavities treated for free by dental students at a local university during special “low income” days.
12. I was the first in my family to get braces after the school nurse identified a speech impediment due to crooked teeth. My mother actually protested, “Does a boy really need straight teeth?” I wasn’t planning to enter any beauty pageants, but I had some really gnarly teeth.
13. I was a good student, so I needed tools of the trade. I got 20-year-old hand me down encyclopedias for my studies. It saved me trips to the library and photocopying money. The library encyclopedias weren’t much newer.
14. Even though I had my own bedroom, we had a revolving door of aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents living with us, sleeping in the living room for months at at time. It was not a large house; it was often full of people.
15. When the relatives did move out, my parents subsidized their relatives’ lifestyles. My parents paid for rent, food, cars, kids’ college expenses.
16. While my own life has been drama free, there was no shortage of drama around. My half-brother came to live with us when I was 10 and he was 19. He had a drinking problem early in life. He went to a “lesser” college because of a girl. They eloped and when they couldn’t make if financially, they had to move back home; this happened several times. The last time it happened, it became a permanent move, with a kid in tow. He’s doing well now, and he inherited our parents’ house.
17. Some family members had out-of-wedlock kids and interracial marriages (maybe not a big deal today but not as common back then). I had an aunt who married a husband who had a second family in a foreign country (she was a gullible person and easily conned). She had a kid with him, then found out she was the second wife, and he moved his first family to the US to be with them. I had another aunt who we all thought had “made it” because she married into a super wealthy family. She and her husband were kidnapped and held for ransom (and murdered).
18. Many aunts and uncles had mental health issues that went undiagnosed. They were known as the crazy family members, but still family. They led their lives suffering and really not knowing or understanding. They were unemployable. They might temporarily act normal but could never hold down jobs and most relationships. My parents helped them as best as they could. Ironically, they outlived my parents. and their kids support them. Their kids can support them because my parents helped support their kids.
19. There were a lot of arguments between my parents, siblings, in-laws, etc. Small house. lots of people, mental illness, it was inevitable. I mostly stayed out of it. Sometimes people made bone-headed choices (aka mistakes) and another family member would bail them out. I didn’t like it. I couldn’t understand it. But I accepted it.
20. Most of all, my parents’ dining room/kitchen looked just like the Connner’s. It was cheap looking. It was small and cluttered. It was usually filled with a large, close but sometimes dysfunctional family. The room still looks the same except the family has dispersed after my parents passed away.

(Source: ABC Television)

It helped me immensely to grow up with some challenging circumstances and complex family dynamics but never really having the stigma of being poor. Because I lived with my less fortunate family members, I always thought I was doing all right. I grew up in a solidly middle class neighborhood and felt like I had everything my friends had (minus the Izod shirts, Member’s Only jackets and Jordache Jeans). My parents did a great job of maintaining an illusion of middle class stability while building a mountain of debt. It wasn’t until college that I began to even have a glimpse of the structural problems with my parents and their extended family. Before that, everything was just “normal” to me.

As a I started my own journey of financial obligations (e.g., student loans, car loans, credit cards, etc.) and eventual financial independence, I realized all the challenges but also missed opportunities my parents encountered. It’s heartbreaking to think the lives they could have led had they just had someone guiding them and perhaps if they had fewer relatives draining their resources. They worked hard their entire lives but enjoyed few luxuries. They were able to hold onto the house through the ups and towns, raise financially independent kids (it took my brother a bit longer), and help their family members, so that does count for something. In that sense, all our lives are better than the Conner’s since they seemed to be stuck in an endless loop of misery (even 30 years later).

I developed a strong interest in personal finance. I semi-retired at 40 due to diligent saving and investing. Although my family is much smaller, it remains central to my life. Rather than maximize income, I focus on optimizing my time. How do I make enough money while maximizing my time with my wife and kids.? My wife and I both work from home, and we’ve been present at every of one our kids’ milestones and events (e.g., sports games, talent shows, scouting, plays, etc.). We take a lot of family vacations. Other than our kids’ private schools, we keep our expenses low. Financial security has driven my choices but the display of wealth or excessive consumption is anathema to me. I strive to be financially savvy enough to avoid stupid mistakes and financially wealthy enough to survive the inevitable mishap.

In any dictatorial regime, the ruler wastes public money on his aides to protect him, and this leads to economic deterioration and corruption Why does this not happen in China, even though it is a dictatorial country?

China is not a dictatorship because Xi Jinping cannot make any major decisions without first discussing them with the seven-member politburo.

You have no idea about how societies collapse; it is not about wasting public money.

It is about a significant portion of the population not having ownership over any assets, such as land, so they have no interest in social stability. Most importantly, they feel that the door is closed to their owning any assets.

So they feel the only way out is to overthrow the current system.

Any Chinese citizen can apply to join the Communist Party; usually they will be rejected on the first application. Xi was rejected nine times before being accepted the tenth time.

Chuck Roast Soup

Ingredients

• 1 (3 1/2 pound) chuck roast
• 2 (46 ounce) cans tomato juice
• 1 package frozen mixed vegetables
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 2 stalks celery, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup okra, chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley
• Tabasco sauce to taste
• Salt to taste
• 1 cup spaghetti, broken into small pieces

Instructions

1. Cut chuck roast into small pieces, removing all gristle and fat. Place in a very large pot and add all ingredients except spaghetti. Cover and simmer slowly for 3 hours.
2. Add spaghetti and simmer for another hour.

Serves 12 to 14.

This freezes well.

What does the little house in the center of the Pentagon represent?

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union believed that the downtown Pentagon building was a top-secret meeting room.

They claimed this because they saw government officials entering and exiting the building at the same time through the satellite images available to them.

They believed it only ended up discovering something completely different:

The “secret” building was a kind of hot dog kiosk for employees.

Our Eye-Opening 24 Hours in CHINA in 2023 (has Shanghai changed?)

We visited Shanghai for the first time in 2016 and have since been there three times. However, our last visit was in 2018, and A LOT has happened since then, in the world overall but in China especially.

The battle for Osowiec Fortress

On August 6th,1915, over 7,000 German soldiers surrounded Osowiec Fortress. The Fortress was built in the 19th century on a strategic hotspot near the river Biebrza, in what is now Poland, but back then was part of the Russian Empire.

It was a formidable fortress, but only 900 Russian soldiers defended it against 7,000 advancing German troops. After months of trying to get the soldiers to surrender, the Germans launched a Chlorine and Bromine Gas attack against the fortress, followed by an artillery bombardment.

Since the Russian soldiers were just simple militia, they had no protection and suffered horrendous casualties from the gas. As the 7,000 thousand German troops advanced against the fort, they were met with a terrifying sight.

The hundred or so Russian troops who had survived the gas attack charged the German soldiers covered in blood and chemical burns, and coughing up bits of their melted lungs. The Chlorine gas mix with the moisture in their lungs turning it to Hydrochloric Acid.

With bloody cloths wrapped their melting faces they charged the German soldiers. The German troops thought the dead where coming at them and ran screaming in terror. As the horrified Germans retreated they got caught in their own barbwire traps, allowing the Russians to pick them off with ease.

They didn’t manage to hold the fortress, but the remaining Russian soldiers were able to destroy the fort before retreating to safety. The battle for Osowiec Fortress was so horrific for the advancing German army, it went on to become known as the Attack of the Dead Men.

Should the U.S. establish a base in Taiwan to deter the communists?

The Yanks want to get involved in the third Chinese Civil War, fine, it’s the Yanks we want to fight.

Hainan Island incident, U.S. bombs Chinese embassy in FRY …… Wait, the Chinese haven’t had a chance to get their revenge yet.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

U.S. naval, ground and air forces did participate in the 1945~1950 chinese Civil war in China.

There were U.S. naval bases in Tsingtao, Shanghai and Taiwan.

U.S. troops were stationed in Peiping, Tientsin, Tangshan, Chinwangtao, Tsingtao, Shanghai and Nanking.

The U.S. air force controlled all of China’s air space and took aerial photographs of all China’s strategic areas for military maps.

At the town of Anping near Peiping, at Chiutai near Changchun, at Tangshan and in the Eastern Shantung Peninsula, U.S. troops and other military personnel clashed with the People’s Liberation Army and on several occasions were captured.

Chennault’s air fleet took an extensive part in the chinese civil war.

Besides transporting troops for Chiang Kai-shek, the U.S. air force bombed and sank the cruiser Chungking, which had mutinied against the Kuomintang.

All these were acts of direct participation in the war.

The Chinese civil war from 1945 to 1950 was apparently started by Chiang Kai-shek, but actually started by the United States.

As stated in Acheson’s Letter, the United States in this last war has given the Kuomintang government material aid to the value of “more than 50 percent” of the latter’s “monetary expenditures” and “furnished the Chinese armies” (meaning the Kuomintang armies) with “military supplies”.

It is a war in which the United States supplies the money and guns and Chiang Kai-shek supplies the men to fight for the United States and slaughter the Chinese people.

All these wars of aggression, together with political, economic and cultural aggression and oppression, have caused the Chinese to hate American imperialism.

Make trouble, fail, make trouble again, fail again . . . till their doom; that is the logic of the American imperialists and all reactionaries over in dealing with the chinese people’s cause, and they will never go against this logic.

CAST AWAY ILLUSIONS, PREPARE FOR STRUGGLE!

American Imperialism has prepared the conditions for its own doom.

What’s the worst mistake you made in college?

This is a story about how one night in university can destroy your life forever. Danny Santulli was 18-years-old and a freshman at the University of Missouri. In October 2021, Danny was captured on CCTV being blindfolded and being led down a flight of stairs, in an event named “Pledge Dad Reveal Night.”

Danny was made to drink a litre of Vodka straight and by himself. At around 10.55, Danny collapsed and some of the frat members carried him to a sofa. At around midnight Danny was captured on CCTV sliding off the sofa and shortly after he was found unconscious with blue lips.

Shockingly, instead of calling an ambulance for Danny the frat members piled him into a car dropping him on the way. They drove him to hospital, but at this point he was in cardiac arrest. He had to be resuscitated and spent the next 6 weeks in intensive care.

Prior to this evening Danny had been left needing stiches and crutches, after he’d been forced to climb inside a bin with broken glass inside. Two nights before the night in question, he broke down in tears on the phone to his sister and told her about how stressed he felt about the pledges.

His family had begged him to quit the pledge, but he didn’t want to be ridiculed. This is Danny now, in the picture BELOW.

He will need full time care for the rest of his life.

Michio Kaku BREAKS DOWN Into Tears: “They Lied To Us For 92 Years!”

In a world shrouded by secrets and concealed truths, one man’s shocking revelation is changing everything we thought we knew about our universe. Prepare to witness the unraveling of a century-long deception that has kept humanity in the dark for 92 years. Dr. Michio Kaku has now exposed a breathtaking reality about the origin of our universe, one that starkly opposes the Big Bang theory. But how exactly does this discovery change our understanding of the Big Bang? And what does the discovery of this ancient galaxy mean for our understanding of the universe?

What unpopular opinion do you have about China?

BEIJING: I moved to China in October 2010 and from the perspective of Western popular opinion that’s very absurd. Much of the West looks at China in a very negative way and they believe it odd people will stay in the country for a long time.

Most of my family and friends back in my native country are quick to post anti-China stories on their Social Media sites and they do so without confirming the veracity of the articles through me.

But that’s alright, I’ve gotten accustomed to it. Sometimes, I’ll read articles in the media about China and wonder if the author is an aspiring fiction book writer.

The basic themes are: China is collapsing, its economy is crashing, war against China is imminent and Covid has destroyed China.

But if such tales were true how did China become the world leader in attracting inbound Foreign Direct Investments? The country is on pace to lure in over US$160bn this year.

Major Wall Street and London banks and investment firms including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and HSBC have poured in huge money into China this year and they have published reports forecasting the nation’s economy will stay strong.

Hence the narrative that China’s economy will crash is just noise and nothing more. As such the other claims are proven wrong.

Wealthy bankers do not intentionally make silly investments and conduct extensive research before choosing where to invest.

The Western countries appear to have been hardest hit by the Covid pandemic so it’s very odd they see China as the nation that will crack under the public health crisis.

Let the numbers speak for themselves. The US has had hundreds of thousands of people die from Covid while only a few thousand died from the virus in China.

The virus has adversely impacting everyone’s lives and hopefully the social distancing measures and wearing face masks’ requirements can finally end next year.

The regulations are a real nuisance and not enjoying the rights to travel has bothered me a lot. Nevertheless, these restrictions will not spell the death knell for China.

The Chinese government is not on the verge of collapse either. The economy is running smoothly and social stability remains secured.

Accordingly, my opinion that China is doing fine and will continue to do so will be an unpopular viewpoint for the next few years in the West.

But I care very little about following pop culture sentiments. That’s just not who I am.

As reported by the Global Times:

“Regardless of their attitude toward China, most US and other Western elites tend to believe that China's GDP will surpass that of the US in a decade or less, and most of them also believe that the US' military and technological advantages over China will shrink further as time passes. Although many have claimed that China's stability was achieved through economic growth and controls and tried desperately to search for internal tensions in China, few Western forces believe that China would get out of control politically.”

China has endured many challenges and will prevail. People predicting the nation’s doom are just engaged in fantasy-thinking.

They don’t like China, want the country to fail and therefore concluded that will happen. But their forecasts have been proven false time and again.

A Bullied Student With Vitiligo Is Celebrating Learning To Love Her Skin By Turning It Into Art

A bullied student with vitiligo is celebrating learning to love her skin by turning it into art making a world map, flowers and even a Van Gogh painting. Ashley Soto, 21, from Orlando in Florida, USA, has found turning her white patches of skin into art has empowered her and helped her to embrace her vitiligo.

She was diagnosed with the condition that affects one percent of the worlds population, at the age of 12 when a porcelain spot appeared on her neck. Within a year, it had spread to 75% of her body in spots and patches.

After being asked if she had showered in bleach the teen hid her skin beneath long jumpers and jeans to avoid further ridicule. But now, shes turning her body into art by tracing her vitiligo, making a world map and a beautiful arrangement of flowers to Vincent van Goghs The Starry Night painting.

There are some rumors that the Saudis are going to start using RMB instead of Dollars as payment for their oil. What are your thoughts?

Its not a Rumour

Saudi Arabia has established a $15 Billion a year energy swap with China for payment in RMB for 5 years.

This means China pays RMB and Saudi uses the RMB to pay Chinese firms for Construction and Infrastructure

The Main reason for this is China wants to bypass the USD in trade to avoid complications.

A Five year deal means securing Oil supplies for 5 years even if US imposes sanctions similar to Russia on China.

Of course its only for 4–5 specific trades but as Bill Chen says , Five years ago it was unthinkable.

What is the difference between nerds and geeks? Can you use both these words together or separately in the same sentence?

A nerd is an individual with great intellectual capacity who does well in school, particularly in subjects like mathematics and the sciences. They may not care about socialization. “You don’t want to take that class. It’s full of nerds”.

A geek is a person with a passion for something that isn’t particularly popular with everyone and has very deep knowledge of the subject. “She’s a real anime geek”.

Geek. Loves computers and knows all about them, but no deep general knowledge. Often will wear clothing reflective of their passions. Won’t read anything outside their specialized base.

Nerds become scientists. Geeks become engineers.

NATO failed in Ukraine against Russia. Now it’s targeting China

Pepe is the star in this show. This is a VERY GOOD discussion. Talking about Europe, and the pivot to China, and the fiasco as it stands.

Some interesting points… The Dangerous trio. HERE at 21:00.

Russians fighting one had behind their backs. HERE at 27:00.

Ukraine war entering a new stage with the Poles and Northern European Proxies. HERE.

Watch the entire video.

Why can’t African countries produce cars?

Originally Answered: Why can’t African Countries produce cars?

This question should be rephrased to “How many African Countries produce cars?”

There are 54 countries in Africa and more than 10% of the countries manufacture cars though some of them still import engine parts and assemble them in their plants.

1. MOROCCO – LARAKI

Laraki, a car manufacturer based in Casablanca, Morocco The company designed and manufactured its own range of luxury performance cars and sport models. Larakis are strictly concept cars, custom-built for each customer, and were ranked among the most expensive cars in the world in 2015, priced at over $2- million each.

Rapper French Montana shows off his Laraki car.

2. TUNISIA – Wallyscar

Competing in the lucrative off-road market, the small but powerful Wallyscar, manufactured in La Marsa, Tunisia, is a relatively new company, founded in 2006. The company is building a strong reputation for affordable, reliable and powerful 4X4s, despite the size of its vehicles, which are similar to Suzuki and Skoda.

According to reports from 2014, the company sells over 600 units a year, predominately in Africa and the Middle East, but also as far as Panama and Europe. The company’s plans include making its sporty, colourful, off-road vehicles more environmentally friendly, as well as trying its luck in international off-road motorsport

3. UGANDA – KIIRA

4. NIGERIA – INNOSON

5. GHANA – KANTANKA

6. KENYA – MOBIUS

What was done with good intentions but went terribly wrong?

When India was under British rule, there was a problem there. There were many snakes.

They were so common that it was dangerous to go out. Snakes were everywhere.

The risk of dying from the fatal bite of such a specimen was too great.

Therefore, the government decided that something needed to be done to prevent the snakes from flooding the land.

It was decided to financially reward people who brought in dead snakes. “It’s a win-win situation,” the government thought. People will get the money they need while reducing the snake population.

That went really well for a while.

Under the government’s direction, people dutifully killed snakes in exchange for handsome sums of money.

But people think for their own benefit when the situation permits.

So some enterprising minds decided to breed snakes and then kill them and collect the money for it.

Soon the government realized what these people were doing and immediately stopped the bounty program.

The people who bred the snakes for money decided that the only thing that could be done with their now worthless snakes was to set them free.

As a result, the snake population grew faster than ever before.

This snake effect now also serves as a metaphor for when one state intervenes too much and therefore causes the opposite effect.

Why do some countries want budget travelers to stay away?

Budget travellers can be problematic. There are two types of budget travellers. One is people like me. I don’t have big money, so when I travel I go by train or by low cost airlines, stay in cheaper B&B’s or budget hotels (occasionally in hostels), and eat one meal per day from the grocery.

Then there are these guys:

They are begpackers

, relatively wealthy first world tourists that travel to considerably poorer countries and live relying on begging from locals.

Why do countries welcome tourism? Because tourism brings money. George Clooney (or whichever rich person) visits Edinburgh flying in with an Emirates flight (and he clearly books the First Class private cabin) staying at the Balmoral hotel, eating at three Michelin stars restaurants, and visiting the city with a rented limousine: he leaves a lot of money. I fly in with Ryanair, stay in a cheapo B&B with shared bathroom, eat fixed price lunches, shop at Scotmid for dinner, mostly walk and only take a local bus if necessary. But I still bring money.

Begpackers do not bring money, rather they draw money from the local economy. A young American or European tourist visiting India and relying on begging from people that are less privileged than they are to fund their holidays isn’t a budget tourist, they are leeches!

What is something you hate about the direction in which society is heading?

Originally Answered: What is something you hate about the direction society is heading?

Just one thing? I’m a certified middle-aged curmudgeon. I could go on for pages about all the things that are wrong with the way society is going. But I’ll pick just one for this answer, lest I make everyone hate me.

And, ironically, that’s one of the biggest problems with society today: the inability to tell the truth for fear of offending people.

I see this all the time in education.

Before I was a teacher, I spent some time as a special education assistant for a public school in a wealthy suburb of Chicago. It was there that I first saw the lengths teachers and administrators had to go to avoid stating the obvious to a parent, lest that parent get offended and/or threaten to sue the school.

Your child has severe emotional and behavioral disorders and if you, the parent, don’t get some outside help for your kid, your kid is likely to end up in jail. Your child’s problems are beyond the abilities of the school to help at this point.

We could never say that to a parent, no matter how true it was.

I saw it even more when I became a teacher.

If a student has an attitude problem, I can’t just tell the parent, “your kid was giving me attitude.” I have to document exactly what was said, the context, why I felt it was offensive, and what I think should be done about it. Then I have to wait before I tell the parent, and re-read my documentation to make sure it doesn’t sound offensive. Most of the time, when a student is giving me attitude, I know that the student’s parents won’t do anything about it anyway, so why bother documenting it and punishing the student, when it won’t change the behavior? The student often gets that behavior from the parent in the first place.

If a student fails a test, I can’t just tell the parent it’s because their kid was not paying attention in class and spends too much time talking to the people around him and disturbing his classmates. I have to word it in such a way that I sound non-judgmental, which usually means making it sound like the problem was with the way I taught it, not the kid’s complete lack of attention while I was teaching it.

We can never blame the parents for bad parenting or the students for a lack of parental guidance at home, no matter how true it is. So I usually just end up taking the fall for a student’s and parent’s problems.

A student can come to school half-asleep and announce to the class that they went to a midnight screening of a new movie the night before, then fail that day’s assignments, and I can’t tell the parents it’s their fault for letting their kid stay up all night for a movie. That is, I can’t tell the truth.

I’ve had parents tell me that they’re afraid of taking away their child’s video games until the child gets their grades up, because they don’t want the child to be mad at them. Somehow, I’m supposed to avoid telling the truth in that situation: you’re trying to be your child’s friend, not their parent. It’s a good thing if your kid is mad at you sometimes. That’s how the system works.

A few years ago, there was a movement to weigh students in public schools and send the parents a letter if their child was overweight or obese. As a former overweight child (now overweight adult), I thought this was a good idea. Maybe some parents just don’t see it or don’t realize how bad it really is with their child.

So many parents got offended when they got the letters that some school districts quit doing them.

Imagine getting a letter from your child’s school saying that their BMI put them in the “overweight” category for their age and, instead of thinking you need to help your child get healthy, you get offended and criticize the school for telling you the truth.

The schools made a mistake: they told parents the truth about something the parents should know about. Imagine that … telling the truth. No wonder so many parents got offended.

[Honorable Mention]

Derrick Mosley, a 22-year-old man from Portland, tried to rob a gunstore with a baseball bat.

He entered the shop, smashed a glass display case and pulled a handgun from the display.

The store manager drew his own handgun and ordered Mosley to drop his bat, the newly acquired gun, plus a knife.

He made Mosley lay on the floor, and that was where the police found him when they arrived.

He was charged with first degree robbery and unlawful possession of a firearm, according to the news release.

I guess he learned the hard way that you should never bring a bat to a gunfight.

Just how bad is it in China? If you think it’s bad in China, please watch this

If you know someone who hates China for all the wrong reasons, maybe showing them this video will help.

Why do Western elites feel so threatened by China that they’re willing to risk a world war to maintain “rules-based international order”?

America Has Dictated Its Economic Peace Terms to China

What was the centrepiece of US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s speech? She said:

China must accept America’s demarcation of the status quo. If it does not respect the boundaries drawn for it by Washington between harmless prosperity and historically consequential technological development, then it should expect to face massive sanctions.

What does that mean?

Obviously, it means that China must respect the division of labour in the world that the US has drawn for China. China can only be at the low end of the industrial chain, producing cheap household goods and doing some incoming assembly.

If China develops according to this international division of labour, it will be “harmless prosperity” for the United States.

This is the international order that has already formed rules.

If China wants to develop high technology, it is breaking the order and the division of labour in the world. Of course, the United States and the West want to sanction China because China is a “disruptor of the order”.

In the eyes of the Americans, the status quo of the United States and the West at the top of the “food chain”, which was formed after the WWII, is unchangeable. China is at the lower end of the “food chain”, and this is China’s destiny, which the Chinese must accept and must not challenge this order.

Janet Yellen wasn’t the only one to say this, and Jake Sullivan’s speech put the US’s intentions in what amounted to a direct pick-me-up. He said:

In terms of global economic integration, the United States’ expectations for the stability of the global order have not been realized. The original order of the world is a pyramid structure. Developed countries and developing countries should perform their duties in this pyramid structure and get their own place. This is the stable international order and international division of labor that the United States hopes for.

Jake Sullivan’s speech was obviously more straightforward. What he meant was that the “food chain” of the world division of labour formed after the WWII was irrevocable, and that both developed and developing countries should play their respective roles and should not try to change it.

That is to say, the financial hegemony, scientific and technological hegemony and military hegemony of the developed countries are the results of the WWII division of labour, and the production of cheap commodities by the developing countries is likewise the result of the WWII division of labour. This world economic order is unchangeable and cannot be challenged.

The speeches of Jake Sullivan and Janet Yellen actually revealed the U.S. government’s understanding of China. That is, China should accept the post-WWII international division of labour and should not challenge this order.

China is now developing the whole industrial chain, and will also invest in high technology, and will also step up investment in military construction and military equipment. These are all disruptions to the existing order, which the United States certainly cannot tolerate.

Other countries are either technologically advanced but have far fewer people than the US, or have large populations but are far less technologically advanced than the US, and they have nothing to compare with the US.

Only China has a population several times larger than the US, and the technology is still catching up, and the size of the economy is getting closer.

With an economic scale, it can support a huge and advanced army, and it will have a strong ability to export culture.

Therefore, China is indeed the only country on earth that may pose a “threat” to “America First”.

If “America First” cannot be preserved, can “Eurocentrism” or “Americacentrism” and “white supremacy” still survive? China is therefore a “threat” to the West as a whole.

But China is an opportunity for Asia. Whether Asians can be on an equal footing with Westerners depends on whether China can rise smoothly.

Gone are the days when whites were at the top of the “international caste system” and coloured people were at the bottom.

Creamy Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

Fall is officially here. Now is a great time to try out some hearty autumn dishes like chicken and wild rice soup. Our recipe is rich and creamy. You can serve it as an appetizer if you want, but it’s filling enough to stand on its own as an entrée. This recipe stands out from the rest because it calls for freshly roasted chicken, plenty of delicious vegetables, and a nice dollop of plain Greek Yogurt. Adding yogurt, instead of cream, for example, helps to make this soup extremely flavorful but also relatively light, calorie-wise.

Ingredients

• 1 deli-roasted chicken, about 2 1/2 pounds
• 6 cups water
• 2 medium carrots, ends trimmed and cut into chunks
• 1 small rib celery, cut into chunks
• 1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
• 1 small bay leaf
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/2 cup chopped yellow onion
• 1/3 cup uncooked wild rice*
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup Cabot 2% Plain Greek Yogurt or Cabot Plain Greek Yogurt
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme leaves
• 1/4 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper, or more to taste

* You can reduce the cooking time with “quick-cooking” wild rice, which is done in about 15 minutes, or substitute another flavorful rice, such as brown basmati.

Instructions

1. Pull off meat from chicken, placing skin, bones and any hot or solidified juices in large saucepan. Dice 2 cups of chicken meat, saving rest for another use, and set aside in refrigerator.
2. Add water, carrots, celery, peppercorns and bay leaf to saucepan; bring to boil over high heat, then reduce heat to maintain simmer. Cover pan and cook broth for one hour.
3. Pour broth through strainer set over large bowl, pressing on solids to extract all broth. Discard solids.
4. Melt butter in empty saucepan. Add onions and cook, stirring, for about 3 minutes or until onion is tender and just beginning to brown.
5. Pour in strained broth. Add wild rice, bring to simmer and cook covered for 40 to 50 minutes or until rice is tender.
6. In small bowl, whisk together heavy cream, yogurt and cornstarch until completely smooth with no small lumps; stir mixture into pot and continue stirring until soup thickens and returns to simmer. Add thyme, salt, pepper and 2 cups of reserved diced chicken.
7. Taste soup, adding additional salt and pepper if needed. Stir until heated through and serve.

Yield: about 6 cups for 4 servings

F-35 drops to 50 aircraft per year production, J-20 jumps to 120+

Lockheed Martin, the main contractor, and manufacturer of the F-35 fifth-generation fighter, is bracing for a significant financial hit in 2023. Production issues have led to a shortfall of about 50 aircraft, which is expected to cost the firm hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

The production hiccup represents over a third of the total F-35 output and exceeds the entire annual order from the U.S. Air Force, which usually stands at around 48 aircraft. Initially, Lockheed Martin had plans to deliver between 147 and 153 F-35s to all clients in 2023. However, the implementation of upgrades under the Technology Refresh 3 [TR 3] program has been fraught with significant challenges.

J-20 production is booming

News of this drastic drop in F-35 production comes amidst reports of China’s rapid expansion of its own fifth-generation fighter production, exceeding 120 aircraft per year. The F-35 and China’s J-20 are the only two fighters of their generation currently in production and deployed at the squadron level.

Both aircraft sit at the pinnacle of aviation technology with their advanced features and sophistication. However, the J-20, a larger twin-engine fighter, is more attuned to long-range missions and air-to-air combat.

The F-35 Block 4 upgrade will elevate the internal air-to-air missile capacity of the F-35A and F-35C variants from four to six missiles. This narrows the gap with the J-20, which can reportedly carry up to eight missiles in its more spacious weapons bays. Initially, the first TR-3 F-35s were slated to enter service in April, but unforeseen obstacles have pushed this date back to December.

The F-35 program has experienced a series of setbacks, drawing criticism from both military and civilian leaders. One of the most notable issues since early 2022 has been the underperformance of the F135 engine, which has resulted in billions of dollars in additional operational costs for the American fleet alone and likely more for international operators as most F-35s are built for export.

Foreign operators have echoed these sentiments. The South Korean National Assembly’s National Defence Committee disclosed in October 2022 that the country’s F-35s had experienced 234 flaws in 18 months from January 2021 to June 2022. These included 172 incidents rendering the aircraft non-operational and 62 cases where specific missions could not be performed. Despite hopes for improvement, the first half of 2022 saw little change in these figures.

Despite these issues, the U.S. and its allies face a conundrum. There is a noticeable lack of NATO-compatible fifth-generation fighters, leaving them with limited options. Older fourth-generation fighters are likely to struggle against advanced aircraft like China’s J-20, the forthcoming FC-31 naval fighter, and even Russia’s slightly less stealthy Su-57.

People changes at the People’s Bank of China

Along with the much-discussed dismissal of Qin Gang as foreign minister, another important dismissal in July was Yi Gang as the 12th governor of the People’s Bank of China.

Yi Gang was widely criticized with some of the reasons being:

• He was educated in the US, and his family continues to live in the US, and he was more considerate of US interests than Chinese interests;
• He supported western globalist interests instead of Chinese national interests, and did not have enough awareness that the US and China are fighting a full-spectrum cold war;
• He did not take advantage of the high inflation in the US to make the Chinese yuan a more powerful currency globally and instead lowered Chinese interest rates, helping the US Fed to bring more US dollars back to the US;
• He missed multiple strategic opportunities by not changing more Chinese assets into gold, and did not move out of the US dollar fast enough.

Some of the criticism of Yi Gang came from Pan Gongsheng who was party secretary at the People’s Bank of China, and has now been appointed as Yi Gang’s replacement as the 13th governor of the People’s Bank of China. When Janet Yellen visited China in July, she met with Pan Gongsheng.

The likely outcome of this appointment is that Chinese currency and foreign exchange policy is likely to become more sharply aggressive, starting with the August BRICS meeting in South Africa.

In order to make a stronger impression and announcement at the BRICS meeting, where more members will be admitted, and as the most economically powerful member of BRICS, China will have to make some big moves on this front. Pan Gongsheng is likely make major moves for this major event, which all of the developing world and France are watching closely.

What was the happiest mistake you ever made?

This didn’t happen to me, but it happened to a friend.

My friend Tony lived paycheck to paycheck in assorted jobs. He inherited $50,000 when his grandmother passed away. His friends convinced him to invest the money rather than spend it on a new car, vacations, etc., and eventually he agreed. Another friend, Jack, who worked in finance, convinced him to put the $50,000 into Cisco stock. This was back in April 2000, just before the tech bubble burst, and Cisco was at its all-time high, around $75 a share. Then the bubble burst, and the stock crashed.

Two and a half years later, we were all at a wedding of a mutual friend, and the friend who recommended Cisco was very embarrassed and apologized profusely for his recommendation.

Tony: What do you mean? Why are you sorry you made that recommendation?

Jack: Because the stock tanked right after you invested, and it’s continued to go down and down; your $50,000 investment is now probably worth $6000 or $7000. Haven’t you looked at your statements?

Tony: Sure, I’ve looked at the statements; it’s up to about $83,000! It’s doing great!

Jack: You must have misread your statement; maybe it said $8300? When was that statement?

Tony: Maybe two weeks ago, and I’m sure it said $83,000!

Jack: That’s impossible!

After the reception we all went back to Tony’s apartment and Tony pulled out his last statement, which indeed did say $83,000!

Then we saw why; Tony bought the “wrong” stock!

Jack had told him to buy Cisco (the high tech company), and Tony bought Sysco (the food distribution company); both stocks are pronounced exactly the same. While Cisco crashed, Sysco did great!

So that was a very happy ‘mistake’ that Tony made!

Why hasn’t Putin taken the opportunity over the past 20 years to modernise Russia’s economy? (E.g., while China now has Lenovo and Huawei, Russia’s main companies are energy extraction companies.)

Leadership!!!!

Thats the big difference

China has had a continuous and steady rule of the Communist Party of China

It has always been Country & Party First, Individual Next

For China the Leadership and Governance was always there. Always Strong and entirely spread across the Nation.

All it required was an Economic Transition Which Visionary leaders like Deng and later Xi Jingping have been able to fulfil to a massive extent.

From 1931 in many cases to 2022 – for almost 91 years you have had a very strong and in general unified Political System that has never grown weak mainly due to a Unified Populace (90% Han Chinese) and an Ancient 5000 year old Civilization that was never interrupted too much.

So as i said – China just needed to make some Economic Tweaks and change from a Socialist Communist Country to a Capocracy.

---

Russia is much different

To begin with – the Entire Political System was overhauled – from Tsars to CPSU to Presidential Democracy to Presidential Autocracy

Already the CPSU was mainly a fractured body loaded with inefficiency and where Meritocracy was replaced by Party Loyalty and Political Relationships and even Family Backgrounds.

Now suddenly in 1991 – A Country that had never voted in the last 1000 years of its life from the Tsars to the CPSU now suddenly began to develop a democracy!!!

It resulted in the Worst form of Oligarchy where a Bunch of Oligarchs, Dolugraki Mafia etc took control of the Soviet Economy and its Resources.

Unlike China – Putin who came in 2000 first had to consolidate the entire Political System. He started off as being a representative of the Oligarchs which is why Clinton and Bush considered him to be basically a Zelensky 1.0

However by 2007 – Putin began to emerge as one of the strongest men in Russia slowly abandoning the Oligarchs and consolidating the Military and Intelligence and building back Russia.

Today after15 years – Putin has a relatively STRONG Political Structure. Basically a Presidential Autocracy.

To build a Political Structure of such Strength and use it to build a Military Force – PUTIN had to sacrifice the Economy to the Oligarchs and use their money for building the Political and Military Strength of Russia

So Today – Russia is at Level Zero when it comes to Economy

---

Good News is – Russia is now in the same stage that China was in 1982 when Deng Xiaoping began his Economic Reforms.

Today Putin is in full control of Russia and is very powerful Politically and Militarily.

This is the time to begin Economic Reforms and this is also a perfect time.

He has Chinas support

He can start building Local Russian Brands and converting Military Technology to Civilian Technology

He can slowly adopt the Chinese method of Manufacture for which he can import the Skilled Labor from China and also train the people of Russia.

He can slowly crush the Oligarchs and Nationalize their Assets. I am sure that is the long term plan. Now that the Oligarchs are posion in Foreign Countries like US or UK or Canada or Australia – Putin will soon go after them and take charge of all their Assets that they got for a throwaway price in 1991–1999

---

Bad News is Putin is 70 Years Old

And unlike Xi and the CPC – Putin is the Autocratic President so he needs a very strong Successor and groom him so that tomorrow the Successor (Someone of around 40–45 years) can continue Putins success and take Russia to newer Heights.

“Utterly Horrifying” Battles Along Front Lines as Russia Smashes Ukraine and their new NATO Heavy Armor

World Hal Turner 28 July 2023

Heart-breaking scenes of dead Ukrainian soldiers and smashed/blown-up NATO Armor are emerging from the battlefields of Ukraine as the Russian Army makes minced-meat out of Ukraine’s “Counter-Offensive” despite all its shiny new NATO gear.

While this radio show and web site support Russia on the political level, there is also the human level which is part and parcel to this conflict.  I candidly admit I find it heartbreaking to see such death and destruction; even when it is Ukrainian troops.  

LINK HERE

Sadly, I understand that it __has__ to be this way, but it is still just emotionally terrible to see such carnage. 

I want the best outcome for the people.

Russia has at least 4 times the artillery of Ukraine and 10 times the ammunition.

We have run out of normal ammunition to send Ukraine, so now send them cluster bombs in desperation, debasing ourselves with no change to the outcome.

Ukraine should just surrender.  They have no chance at all to defeat Russia; they NEVER had any chance.  To continue this slaughter is just useless.

A Nice Find! A 1967 Porsche 911S Barn Find

You know, we all dream of finding our classic dream ride in a barn somewhere. Well, recently Nick Zabrecky recently had his dreams come true, and today we get a look at his 1967 Porsche 911S Barn Find. Nick Zabrecky, of LBI Limited, found this legendary ride a friend had in his barn, where it had been parked for years.

The ride was a bit rusty from years of sitting, and had a small dent in the rear. The ride other than that looked to be in good shape, and after negotiating a deal, Zabrecky was able to purchase the car from his friend.

The ride can be seen in the images below, and Nick hopes to restore it one of these days. Check out the ride in the images and speak your mind on it after the jump.

What’s the one lesson our current generation needs to learn?

Romania faced a population crisis in the 1960s.

People weren’t having babies and leaders feared a population collapse. The infamous dictator, Ceausescu, made a new draconian policy “Degree 770”.

It banned contraception and abortion. Schools then began evangelizing the importance of motherhood. Families began putting more pressure on women to have children.

This led to a rapid uptick in unwanted babies. Orphanages overflowed with children. Babies were being abandoned on street corners.

Years later, there was a rapid uptick in crime. Many of those children grew up without stable homes, living on the streets and in subway stations, huffing paint. They later resorted to theft, prostitution, and became ensnared in poverty.

And, in a bitter political irony, it was this very demographic that was responsible for Ceausescu’s downfall in 1989.

Beyond any talk of abortion, this moment in time speaks to the importance of people living the life they want to live. For generations, our parents and grandparents were pressured to live within narrow confines and fill the shoes their own parents left behind.

Happiness necessitates you disappoint people every now and then. Don’t let outside forces pressure you into a path that you don’t genuinely want.

If you don’t want to do something, say no.

Don’t get so caught up in pleasing people and conforming to expectations. You do you.

African nations defy Collective West, attend Russia-Africa summit

African nations defy Collective West, attend Russia-Africa summit The Duran: Episode 1655.

The Washington Post Is Tarnishing The Courts Of Hong Kong

The Washington Post invents some crude reasoning to explain a new aggressive anti-China move by the Biden administration.

Biden, testing Xi, will bar Hong Kong’s leader from economic summit

SAN DIEGO — The White House has decided it will bar Hong Kong’s top government official from attending a major economic summit in the United States this fall, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the matter, in the latest test of President Biden’s bid to reset relations with China.

The summit in questions is the yearly meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to which 21 Pacific Rim entities belong. China, Taiwan (Chinese Taipan) and Hong Kong are members since 1991. The location of the summit rotates through the membership entities.

Chief Executive John Lee, along with 10 other Hong Kong and Chinese officials, was placed under sanctions by Washington in 2020 after implementing a national security law, imposed by Beijing, that enabled the targeting of pro-democracy leaders, tarnished the reputation of the courts and earned international condemnation as leaders sought to silence dissent.

Lee, then Hong Kong’s security chief, was elevated last year to chief executive, handpicked by Beijing to continue what critics say is a broader campaign of repression in the once-semiautonomous city.

Let me first take issue with the description of the effects of the national security law, specifically the claim that it ‘tarnished the reputation of the courts’.

Courts do not make laws but use the law to make judgments. How then could a new law or a change of a law have tarnished the courts?

A recent judgment by the a Hong Kong court proves that the Hong Kong security law has not done that at all.

The official hymn of Hong Kong is the Chinese national anthem “March of the Volunteers”. After the riots in Hong Kong which led to the implementation of the national security law some protest backers came up with a new one called “Glory to Hong Kong”. (They probably consulted with Bandera followers who suggested ‘Slava Ukraini’ which means ‘Glory to Ukraine’.

Searching Google and some other such service for `Hong Kong national anthem’ brings up the protester hymn. This has led to some embarrassing moments when it was unintentionally played at international sport events.

Any use of the song in Hong Kong is prohibited and can lead to criminal prosecution. But the justice department in Hong Kong wanted to add a civil injunction against any one who makes the protest song available.

But a judge, hand-selected by Lee for national security issues, took the new law down:

A Hong Kong court has dismissed the justice secretary’s request to ban the promotion of a protest song popular during the 2019 anti-government unrest, questioning the effectiveness of the move.

In blocking the injunction bid, the High Court on Friday said the publication and distribution of “Glory to Hong Kong” was already punishable under existing laws, adding a ban might not compel internet search giant Google and other technology firms to take down the tune.
…
Justice minister Paul Lam Ting-kwok lodged the application last month in a bid to bar anyone from promoting the protest tune through “broadcasting, performing, ­printing, publishing, selling, ­offering for sale, distributing, disseminating, displaying or reproducing in any way”.

Authorities believed the ban could provide greater leverage in demanding that internet service providers remove content related to the song.

But Mr Justice Anthony Chan Kin-keung said in his 30-page judgment that the government’s expectations were misplaced.
…
While acknowledging Lee’s view that the song would undermine national security if it were allowed to spread further, Chan rejected the argument that the court should defer to the executive branch on the merits of the intended ban just because it related to the country’s safety.

“It is too sweeping a statement,” he said. “Here, the court is asked to exercise its exceptional powers which affect innocent third parties. The court cannot abdicate its responsibilities.”

Chan pointed to the city’s “extensive and robust” criminal law system in questioning the effectiveness of a civil injunction in deterring offences.

Now again, has the new national security law in Hong Kong really ‘tarnished the reputation of the courts’?

To me its seems it has not. In fact the court ruled against a misuse of the ‘national security’ argument in much sharper form than U.S. courts would probably do.

It was the Washington Post which, by making the claim, actually tried to ‘tarnish the reputation of the courts’ in Hong Kong.

That Chief Executive John Lee was put under U.S. sanction is one of the typical abuses U.S. foreign policies create. It is also not the real reason for keeping him away from the APEC summit.

What the Biden administration really intended with this move was to piss off President Xi of China:

The snub by the United States, which in November will host the annual summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders in San Francisco, comes in the midst of a tenuous thaw in the two powers’ frosty bilateral relationship. It could, some analysts say, induce Chinese leader Xi Jinping to skip the APEC summit — where a meeting with Biden has been anticipated.

If Biden, as the Washington Post‘s opening claimed, really has made a bid to reset relations with China, he would not have taken such a step. One does not try to find better relations by constantly acting against the interests of the other side.

To keep Lee away from the summit is one of the typical kindergarten moves the Biden administration is becoming famous for. The cumulation of such moves under Blinken and Biden has created a strong block of countries that stand united in opposition to U.S. policies and to a large number of the rest of the world developing more sympathy for them.

As Kishore Mahbubani once told his listeners during a speech in Harvard:

The era of western domination of world history was a 200 year aberration, it’s coming to an end.

As a result of that you’ve got to learn to understand non-western perspectives in the world.”

“As someone who travels to 30, 40 countries a year, when I come to the US and I go to my hotel room and turn on the TV, I feel like I’ve been cut off from the rest of the world.

The insularity of the American discourse is actually frightening …

It is time for the U.S. to grow up.

Posted by b on July 29, 2023 at 16:21 UTC | Permalink

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

My (at the time) 75 yr old grandfather, ex Mustang, Spitfire and Typhoon pilot and post war paratrooper was living in a small market town in East Anglia. The house was a nice bungalow backing onto the golf course where he played. He was an imposing figure having boxed and played rugby in his youth and he had seen and experienced things during the war that no man or woman should ever see. So, when he came home from the golf club and found two heroin addled junkie burglars in his hallway, he wasn’t about to be intimidated. Over Sunday lunch a couple of days later he described punching one in the face, breaking his nose. He then grabbed his sword from the umbrella stand and chased the other one out of the front door and down the street. He returned to literally kick the other one out of the house and down the garden path.

When the police attended they were able to identify the burglars from DNA due to the blood that they had left behind.

My grandfather was commended for his help in catching and convicting the aforementioned scumbags but was also given some friendly advice concerning his attempts to run through one of them with his sword!

He died a few years later and I miss him every day.

Washington Post Still Covers Up U.S. War Crimes And Use Of Biological Weapons

The Washington Post is still covering up U.S. war crimes.

Seiichi Morimura, who exposed Japanese atrocities in WWII, dies at 90
His book about Unit 731, a secret biological warfare branch of the Imperial Army, helped force Japan to confront its wartime past

The obituary says:

Seiichi Morimura, a Japanese writer who helped force a reckoning upon his country with his 1981 exposé of Unit 731, a secret biological warfare branch of the Imperial Army that subjected thousands of people in occupied China to sadistic medical experiments during World War II, died July 24 at a hospital in Tokyo. He was 90.

Morimura’s book sold astonishingly well even when it was unusual to confronted people in Japan with the imperial crimes of their nation.

Unit 731 was at its time only comparable to some Nazi doctors who widely experimented on humans:

At a time when Japanese textbooks often minimized atrocities committed by Japan during the war, Mr. Morimura interviewed dozens of veterans of Unit 731 and documented in harrowing detail the conduct of the operation, which was established in 1938 near the Chinese city of Harbin by Japanese medical officer Shiro Ishii.

Disguised as an epidemic prevention and water purification department, the unit functioned through the end of the war as a testing ground for agents of biological warfare. Mr. Morimura’s work helped prompt more investigations in the 1980s and 1990s, which in turn led to a court case that further revealed the extent of the atrocities.

The perpetrators included many respected Japanese physicians. Thousands of people — mainly Chinese, but also Koreans, Russians and prisoners of eight total nationalities, according to Mr. Morimura — endured medical experiments that have been compared to those of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.

Victims, referred to in Japanese as “marutas,” or wooden logs, were infected with typhus, typhoid, cholera, anthrax and the plague with the goal of perfecting biological weapons. Some prisoners were then vivisected without anesthetic so that researchers could observe the effects of the disease on the human body.

“I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped,” one unnamed member of the unit told the New York Times in 1995, recalling a victim who had been infected with the plague. “This was all in a day’s work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time.”

Several thousand people, and maybe many more, were experimented to death by the unit.

When the second world war was over Unit 731 members were supposed to be put on trial for the war crimes they had committed. The U.S. military stopped that as it had planned to use what Unit 731 had learned for its own wars:

The same year that Mr. Morimura’s book was released, an American journalist, John W. Powell, wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that the U.S. government had granted immunity to members of Unit 731 in exchange for the laboratory records from their research. Mr. Morimura alleged the same. For years, the United States dismissed reports of the unit’s experiments as Cold War propaganda.

There is no further mentioning of this in the rest of the Washington Post obit.

The reader is left hanging without learning if those U.S. government claims of ‘Cold War propaganda’ were true or false.

The U.S. did of course do what had been alleged. Documents were released that proved it. The U.S. had done much more.

The Post also repeats false U.S. claims that the Japanese government had hindered war crime trials against the units members:

However, according to U.S. officials, the Japanese government continued to decline to assist American efforts to place perpetrators on a list of war criminals prohibited from entering the United States. Ishii lived in freedom until he died of throat cancer in 1959. The Times reported that other Unit 731 veterans became governor of Tokyo, president of the Japan Medical Association and chief of the Japanese Olympic Committee.

It was the U.S. government, not the Japanese one, which gave immunity to Unit 731 members. It even paid them high amounts for their knowledge:

The US government offered full political immunity to high-ranking officials who were instrumental in perpetrating crimes against humanity, in exchange of the data about their experiments. Among those was Shiro Ishii, the commander of Unit 731. During the cover-up operation, the U.S. government paid money to obtain data on human experiments conducted in China, according to two declassified U.S. government documents.

The total amount paid to unnamed former members of the infamous unit was somewhere between 150,000 yen to 200,000 yen. An amount of 200,000 yen at that time is the equivalent of 20 million yen to 40 million yen today.

40 million yen today are the equivalent of $284,000. Nicer to have than not to have …

The U.S. military used the knowledge gained from Unit 731 to developed a number of biological weapons and to test them, allegedly also on humans. It even used those weapons, like Unit 731, during the war against North Korea and China.

As Jeffrey Kaye, who has long studied the case, writes:

A preponderance of the evidence over the past couple of years has established that the U.S. used biological weapons in its war with North Korea and China in the early 1950s. This is based on CIA, Department of Defense and other government documents, as well as a close reading of the confessions of twenty-five U.S. airmen. It is time now to move on to an examination of how the U.S. pulled off the operation.

The story that follows documents what seems like an unsuccessful attempt by Air Force flyers to tip off the press and government officials to the secret U.S germ warfare campaign then underway in Korea and Northeast China. This attempt at military whistleblowing allows for a wider consideration today of the evidence surrounding the germ warfare charges, especially how the bioattacks were organized.

By repeating the U.S. government false claims of ‘Cold War propaganda’, by not correcting it and by repeating false U.S. statements which accuse the Japanese government of hindering the war crime trials, the Washington Post is covering up the U.S. war crimes that were based on the experiments Unit 731 had made.

Posted by b on July 28, 2023 at 16:45 UTC | Permalink

What did you do that was unusually honest, and turned out well?

Once, while in high school, I went to a store in my small town to buy a gallon of milk for my family. I paid the cashier with a $5 bill but she somehow gave me change for a $20.

I didn’t notice her mistake until I was almost home- I had too much money. I told my Mom that I was going to return it to the store. When I walked in the store, the cashier was not at her place so I went to the back and talked to a man in the meat market area (it was a small business not a chain store like we have nowadays).

I told him I had received too much money in change. He looked at me with a look like “WOW”. He then said, “You are an honest young man, aren’t you?”

I told him that I would have felt like I was stealing if I didn’t return the extra money.

Come to find out that he was the owner of the store. He thanked me and said he would not forget about my honesty.

Well, three years passed and I needed a job. I went in to fill out an application for a job at the same store. When I asked for an application at the front counter, the owner came out of the meat market area and asked if he could help me with anything. I asked him for a job application. He said, “You are hired. Can you start tomorrow?”

Now it was my turn to have a “WOW” look on my face. He told me that he remembered me from when I had returned the extra money.

So…by me not keeping $17 three years earlier, I made way more money for three years while I went to work there after high school.

He also trained me to be a butcher, too.

It does pay to be honest.

This is a true story that I told my kids (and every sports player I coached) as they grew up.

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The things she does to men can end only one way - in murder! When a man in mid-life crisis befriends a young woman, her venal fiancé persuades her to con him out of the fortune they mistakenly assume he possesses.

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