Things are really starting to flush-out on the Geo-political front and the USA appears to be the biggest loser

Here’s some stuff that you just won’t find in the American and Western “news”.  If you read that “news” you would be convinced that Russia is alone, China is a pariah, and America is roaring into life with fantastic employment, great prosperity and excellent news for the future. LOL.

Pro Tip: Do NOT read Western “news”. It’s all lies.

Here. Instead, let’s cook some food. Read about Cats. Learn some things that the United States media is NOT reporting on, and let’s also include some items to ponder…

Catkins

Although we had our previous cat for 18 years, she was never cuddly. Catkins would allow a few pats or scritches, but only on her timetable, and on her terms.

After she went to kitty Valhalla, we were terribly sad. But we finally decided to offer a home to a rescue cat. We only saw a picture, and heard her sad story: her first humans were cat hoarders, and both died of Covid in one week. Her next set of humans had a cat, and she hated that cat…maybe too many cats vying for food and attention in her previous home.

So we took her without ever meeting her. And she is a joy! After an initial period of shyness, she has blossomed: she purrs and cuddles all day long. And at night, nothing makes her happier than cuddling in the bed with us. There is nothing more soothing than the sound of a purring cat in the darkness, her warm, furry body pressed against you.

Ham and Cheese Tortilla Roll-Ups

You have ever-so-easy Southwest flavor going when you make a creamy cheese and corn filling that you wrap up with ham slices and flour tortillas.

Ingredients

‘The dollar is our currency, but it is your problem’

Article HERE.

…

How about Indonesia?

If both Biden’s economic policy scenarios prove correct, Indonesia will face flight of foreign capital which in the short term will depreciate rupiah.

Imports of raw materials, equipment and machinery will shrink, which will further affect production capacity.

However, if the US real sector quickly recovers and grows, Indonesia can seize export opportunities and offset the pressure on the rupiah’s depreciation.

Also, Indonesian products can fill the role Chinese products that are subject to high tariffs.

Indonesia’s non-oil and gas export share to the US ranks second after China.

In another scenario, Chinese products that should be destined for the US will be transferred to other countries, including Indonesia.

Indonesia’s imports from China rank the highest.

As a consequence, the trade deficit with China will be enlarged, which may not be covered by an increase in the trade surplus from the US.

Within the above logic flow, strengthening trade between countries in the same region has the potential to be increased, through ASEAN for example.

The agreement on the use of local currency is the basis for economic growth and regional stabilization without too much dependence on the US dollar.

Furthermore, the diversification of export destination countries deserves attention.

The expansion of the export market deserves to be directed outside the traditional countries that have existed so far.

North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Latin America are wide open to become potential markets for Indonesian products.

In a broader scope, if Indonesia remains willing to play in the international market, increasing competitiveness is nonnegotiable.

The increase in exports should not only be triggered by the weakening of the domestic currency, but must be also supported by the intrinsic superiority of its export products.

Strengthening the domestic market appears to be the safest solution to various sources of external turmoil.

Domestic consumers must be protected so that their purchasing power remains strong and they are able to absorb domestic production, instead of consuming more expensive imported products.

The four options above unfortunately are difficult to realize anytime soon.

Perhaps the 61st US treasury secretary, John Connally, was right when said, “The dollar is our currency, but it is your problem.”

Owning your very own private island

I have one, lol. It’s a little 1.5 acre island in a freshwater lake in Ontario. We have a summer cottage on it. On the mainland, which is not far away, we own a deeded access road, a parking area and a dock.

The island has electricity and phone – installed back in the 1970’s when utility companies would do it for no charge. Today it would be prohibitive.

The downside is not being able to use the cottage year round. The ice is not reliable in winter, and our utility water comes out of the lake (we have no well), so we have to close up in November and reopen mid April or so. The plumbing has to be totally drained, everything packed away, removed and shut off. It’s quite an operation. We’ve had burst pipes many times from water not thoroughly drained from low spots.

We have neighbours on the next island in the bay who stayed all winter due to Covid (normally they are here in the summer, and travel all winter). They actually own a small hovercraft so they can zip over across the ice to the mainland for groceries etc. no matter how sponge like the surface is.

Everything has to come over in our sad little beat up 14 foot aluminum row boat, which is a giant pain in the butt at times. Every appliance (and we’ve replaced all of them in the 34 years we’ve owned it). A new steel roof. Lumber for a sleeping cabin. Replacement beds. Groceries. Drinking water. You name it. Back and forth trips lugging loads. And the old stuff and garbage brought back to the main shore. I’m getting too old to drag old mattresses out of a boat, up the hill and into a van. We often have to enlist neighbours to help.

You need anything fixed beyond DIY, you have to go get the tradesperson and all their stuff, and take them back.

Still, I love it. Love the privacy and the critters. Now that I’m retired, I’m here 5 or 6 months of the year. My children grew up here. We do Canadian Thanksgiving here. Picture taken in late fall when we were closing up and getting snowed on.

The United States cannot count on its ally, the Republic of Korea, for support

The visit to Asia by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) exposed one reality that many people did not realize: The United States cannot count on its ally, the Republic of Korea, for support if war breaks out in the Taiwan Straits.

Meet Marianne Bachmeier, Germany’s ‘Revenge Mother’ Who Shot Her Child’s Killer In The Middle Of His Trial

By Natasha Ishak | Checked By Bernadette Giacomazzo

Published February 1, 2021

Updated June 22, 2021

 

In March 1981, Marianne Bachmeier opened fire in a crowded courtroom and killed Klaus Grabowski — the man on trial for murdering her 7-year-old daughter.

On March 6, 1981, Marianne Bachmeier opened fire in a crowded courthouse in what was then known as West Germany. Her target was a 35-year-old sex offender on trial for her daughter’s murder, and he died after taking six of her bullets.

Marianne Bachmeier was sentenced to six years in prison after shooting her daughter’s rapist and killer in a courtroom.

 

 

Forty years later, the case is still remembered. German news outlet NDR described it as “the most spectacular case of vigilante justice in German post-war history.”

 

Marianne Bachmeier’s Daughter Anna Bachmeier Is Murdered In Cold Blood

Patrick PIEL/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesBachmeier’s case divided public opinion: was the shooting an act of justice or was it dangerous vigilantism?

Before she was christened as Germany’s “Revenge Mother,” Marianne Bachmeier was a struggling single mom who ran a pub and in 1970s Lübeck, a city in what was then West Germany. She lived with her third child, Anna. Her two older children had been given up for adoption.

 

Anna was described as a “happy, open-minded child,” but tragedy struck when she was found dead on May 5, 1980.

According to NDR, the seven-year-old had skipped school after an argument with her mother that fateful day and somehow found herself in the hands of her 35-year-old neighbor, a local butcher named Klaus Grabowski who already had a criminal record involving child molestation.

 

Investigators later learned that Grabowski had kept Anna at his home for hours before he strangled her with pantyhose. Whether or not he sexually assaulted her remains unknown. He then stashed the child’s body in a cardboard box and left it on the bank of a nearby canal.

Grabowski was arrested that same evening after his fiancé alerted the police. Grabowski confessed to the murder but denied that he abused the child. Instead, Grabowski gave a strange and disturbing story.

 

The killer claimed that he strangled the little girl after she tried to blackmail him. According to Grabowski, Anna tried to seduce him and threatened to tell her mother that he had molested her if he didn’t give her money.

Marianne Bachmeier was incensed by this story and a year later, when Grabowski headed to trial for the murder, she had her revenge.

 

Germany’s ‘Revenge Mother’ Shoots Grabowski Six Times

 

Grabowski’s trial was likely a heartache for Bachmeier. His defense attorneys claimed he had acted out of a hormonal imbalance that was caused by hormone therapy he received after being voluntarily castrated years earlier.

At the time, sex offenders in Germany often underwent castration to prevent recidivism, though this wasn’t the case for Grabowski.

 

On the third day of the trial in Lübeck district court, Marianne Bachmeier grabbed a .22-caliber Beretta pistol from her purse and pulled the trigger eight times. Six of the shots hit Grabowski, and he died on the courtroom floor.

Witnesses alleged that Bachmeier made incriminating remarks after she shot Grabowski. According to Judge Guenther Kroeger, who spoke to Bachmeier after she shot Grabowski in the back, she heard the grieving mother say, “I wanted to kill him.”

 

Bachmeier allegedly continued, “He killed my daughter… I wanted to shoot him in the face but I shot him in the back… I hope he’s dead.” Two policemen also claimed to have heard Bachmeier call Grabowski a “pig” after she shot him.

 

The mother of the victim soon found herself on trial for murder herself.

During her trial, Bachmeier testified that she shot Grabowski in a dream and saw visions of her daughter in the courtroom. A doctor who examined her said that Bachmeier was asked for a handwriting sample, and in response, she wrote: “I did it for you, Anna.”

 

She then decorated the sample with seven hearts, perhaps one for each year of Anna’s life.

“I heard he wanted to make a statement,” Bachmeier later said, referring to Grabowski’s claims that her seven-year-old was trying to blackmail him. “I thought, now comes the next lie about this victim who was my child.”

 

Her Sentence Divides The Country

 

Marianne Bachmeier now found herself at the center of a public maelstrom. Her trial received international attention for her ruthless act of vigilantism.

The weekly German magazine Stern ran a series of articles about the trial, digging into Bachmeier’s life as a working single mother who had a very rough start in life. Bachmeier reportedly sold her story to the magazine for roughly $158,000 to cover her legal expenses during the trial.

 

The magazine received an overwhelming response from readers. Was Marianne Bachmeier a distraught mother simply trying to avenge the brutal death of her child, or did her act of vigilantism make her a cold-blooded killer herself? Many expressed sympathy toward her motives but condemned her actions nonetheless.

In addition to the case’s ethical conundrum, there was also a legal debate about whether the shooting was premeditated or not and whether it was murder or manslaughter. Different rulings carried different punishments. Decades later, a friend featured in a documentary about the case claimed to have witnessed Bachmeier perform target practice with a gun in her pub cellar before the shooting.

 

The court ultimately convicted Bachmeier of premeditated manslaughter and sentenced her to six years behind bars in 1983.

 

 

According to a survey by the Allensbach Institute, a majority of 28 percent of Germans deemed her six-year sentencing as an appropriate penalty for her actions. Another 27 percent considered the sentence too heavy while 25 percent viewed it as too light.

In June 1985, Marianne Bachmeier was released from prison after serving only half of her sentence.

She moved to Nigeria, where she married and remained until the 1990s.

After she divorced her husband, Bachmeier relocated to Sicily where she stayed until she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, upon which she returned to a now-unified Germany.

 

With precious little time left, Bachmeier requested Lukas Maria Böhmer, a reporter for NDR, to film her last weeks alive.

She died on Sept. 17, 1996, at the age of 46. She was buried next to her daughter, Anna.

 

Russia responds to Zuckerberg’s FBI revelations

From HERE

The FBI and other US security agencies secretly control American social media giants, Russia’s foreign ministry has alleged. The claim follows a recent interview with Mark Zuckerberg, in which the Facebook CEO supposedly acknowledged such influence.

On Friday, spokesperson Maria Zakharova published a post on her Telegram channel devoted to Zuckerberg’s recent appearance on The Joe Rogan podcast. According to the Russian diplomat, Facebook’s first-in-command recounted how FBI operatives had visited him ahead of the 2020 US presidential elections, which ended in victory for Joe Biden, asking him to suppress stories revolving around the “unseemly contents” of Hunter Biden’s laptop on his platforms.

“The men in black ‘convinced’ Mark Zuckerberg… that these were all Russian fakes,” Zakharova added, referencing the podcast.

She went on to surmise that this kind of “excuse for censorship” was sufficient to have made Facebook’s CEO comply with the request. The subsequent suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story “helped pronounce Biden senior as the winner in the election,” Zakharova noted, remarking that many Americans are still unconvinced.

The diplomat went on to argue that, with the laptop story turning out to be true and with Zuckerberg’s revelations to Rogan, “the world has learned that the US social media played a decisive role in this performance.” She added that the suspension of then-President Trump’s accounts by the main social media platforms just goes to show that the US authorities collude with the “internet monopolies.”

Zakharova concluded that all this proves that the “FBI and other American security services manually control digital giants,” with social media platforms’ leadership only too happy to “participate in dirty political games in Washington.” The senior diplomat also made the claim that “there are no democratic standards in the American electoral system: neither in theory nor in practice.”

Lessons in life

As I approached retirement age, I learned an important lesson from two people.

First Lesson. . .

Mary, a teacher friend, retired 5 years before I did. For the last several years before retirement, Mary spoke of where she and her husband planned to travel as soon as they retired. They had it all mapped out.

Mary was in perfect health for her age as was her husband. They retired on schedule but rarely left their house.

With no prior warning, Mary’s husband suffered a heart attack. It left him very much diminished. He wasn’t bedridden or an invalid but they would never travel. She could still travel but couldn’t leave her husband.

I saw her at JC Pennys at the mall one day. Her advice was. . .don’t wait. If you wait to check things off your bucket list, it may never happen.

Second Lesson. . .

This one is personal. My sister retired after 33 years of teaching. She loved to teach. In fact she loved to teach so much she taught preschool in a rather disadvantaged area perhaps 30 minutes from where she and her husband lived.

The summer that led into her 3rd year of teaching preschool, her list of incoming students included a three-year-old boy who was deaf. She spent the rest of the summer learning sign language for the sole purpose of communicating with this little fellow.

It was April of that school year that I drove 450 miles to spend time with her during school break. She was in perfect health.

By the end of the month, she was in surgery to remove a rapidly-growing, unforgiving type of brain cancer. November of that year she died. She was 61.

I’d always wanted to travel abroad. I had renewed my passport 4 times since I was 28 and never used it. With those 2 lessons in mind, my daughter and I traveled to the UK the following year then Italy then France and Switzerland then Ottawa and Montreal then back to England.We plan to travel to Vancouver, British Columbia next spring.

It took the advice of my colleague and the death of my sister to jar me into action. So you often hear those words “don’t wait because it may be too late”. Well, don’t wait because it may be too late.

Here we are. My sister and I ready for our first day of school. Mother was always busy at the sewing machine sewing identical dresses for us.We had identical lunch boxes as well.

Why South Korea’s largest labor groups oppose military drills with US

South Korea’s two biggest labor umbrella groups have called for the immediate suspension of the country’s ongoing joint military exercise with the United States, calling it a dangerous act that increases the risk of conflict with North Korea.

In front of the War Memorial of Korea, Tuesday, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions criticized President Yoon Suk-yeol for the resumption of the two allies’ first full-scale field trainings in five years.

“We denounce the Yoon administration for being trapped in a swamp of the South Korea-U.S. alliance, a byproduct of the Cold War of the 20th century, and making the wrong moves for the peace, diplomacy and economy of the Korean Peninsula,” they said in a joint statement. “North Korea is one of us, with which the South should work together to put an end to the era of conflict and division and to open the era of self-reliance and peaceful unification.”

The messages promoted during an Aug. 13 rally in Seoul by the KCTU, which advocates for labor rights as well as democracy, national sovereignty and peaceful unification, were stronger and more direct: “Renounce the South Korea-U.S. alliance” and “Abolish conscription.”

Those who are not familiar with how South Korea’s progressive movement has developed over the last decades may find it difficult to understand why labor groups might raise their voices about this issue.

The progressive National Liberation (NL) faction, which emerged as a powerful force in the democratic movement in the 1980s, developed tendencies toward nationalism and anti-U.S. sentiments, the vestiges of which still have a formidable influence on liberal politics in Korea, particular of that generation, according to experts.

“The NL believes that the U.S. was responsible for Korea’s division, and views the country as a barrier to its unification,” Cho Jin-man, an associate professor of politics and international relations at Duksung Women’s University, told The Korea Times. “Such thoughts were developed in the 1980s, and they still adhere to the beliefs.”

To put it simply, he said, the NL and the PD (People’s Democracy) factions were the two main pillars of South Korea’s progressive camp. While the PD faction focused more on issues such as workers’ rights, it shared much of the NL’s nationalistic views over the relationship with North Korea and the U.S.

From HERE

The end of Earnest Hemingway

On July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway got out of bed around 7 a.m., unlocked the gun cabinet in his Ketchum, Idaho home using the key his wife had tried to hide from him, grabbed the double-barreled shotgun that he used to hunt pigeons, and shot himself in the forehead.

 

Though newspapers initially reported his death as an accident, and Hemingway’s wife even claimed that the gun had gone off while he was cleaning it, the writer’s death was eventually revealed to have been a suicide — which had come after a long struggle with depression.

Years later, Hemingway’s wife Mary said: “No, he shot himself. Shot himself. Just that. And nothing else.”

Russia Halts a Natural Gas Shipment to Japan Over Payment Issues

The article "dances" around who that Asian nation is. You have to go elsewhere to get the information. So who is this "Asian" nation?

Sakhalin Energy ships carbon-neutral cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Japan's Toho Gas.

Oh. 

Japan will not pay Russia in Gold, or Rubles or Yuan. They insist on using the USD. -MM

• Russia’s Sakhalin Energy halted a shipment of liquefied natural gas to an Asian buyer, a report said.
• It’s the first time gas has been witheld from an Asian buyer, a move could result in blackouts.
• It will have spillover effects in Europe as it gears up for its own energy crisis in the coming months.

Russia halted a shipment of liquefied natural gas to an Asian customer over payment issues to its new energy operator, Sakhalin Energy. It’s the first sign that Russia is beginning to withhold natural gas from Asian customers over its energy operations, threatening to throw some of its biggest Asian clients into blackouts this winter.

Two traders familiar with the matter said Sakhalin Energy withheld a cargo of LNG to an Asian buyer on the grounds of payment and a delay in signing a revised contract, according to a report from Bloomberg. 

Russia has offered those revised contracts to Asian customers since setting up Sakhalin Energy, a new corporation created to transfer ownership of Russia’s oldest LNG facility from a Bermudan to a Russian entity. 

The revisions ask LNG buyers to pay with currencies other than the US dollar if western sanctions result in payment issues. But most Asian customers have avoided signing so far, Bloomberg reported. 

Withholding fuel from Asian buyers could spell trouble for North East Asia, which has been snapping up LNG in preparation for winter. Japan, Sakhalin’s top buyer, is particularly vulnerable to blackouts this winter if shipments are cut, as it sources around 9% of its natural gas from Sakhalin. 

That could also have spillover effects to Europe, as Asian customers may eat away at fuel supplies from non-Russian suppliers, which are already strapped for supply as Europe gears up for its own energy crunch this winter. 

“Without Sakhalin, North East Asia will have to drag more cargoes away from Europe, intensifying the scramble for gas between Asia and Europe heading into winter that could send LNG prices to unprecedented levels,” energy analyst Saul Kavonic told Bloomberg.

From HERE

A misunderstanding

I received this message a couple of weeks ago and almost shit my pants when it came in.

 

I was frantic for a couple of days about it and went to the police with the message.

2 days after I went to the police they turned up at my front door and escorted me to my elderly neighbours house. The poor man was so embarrassed and was holding out $60 for me and just saying sorry repeatedly. He had sent me the message as a thank you but worded it very badly.

I had seen him at the shops and he went through the self service checkout. He scanned his items and tapped his card but the transaction didn’t go through. He didn’t notice and packed his groceries on his walker and left the store.

I noticed when I went to the same checkout that his payment didn’t go through. It was only $60 so I plaid it for him and said nothing to him.

Unbeknownst to me the security had picked him up outside about not paying and the girl at the front desk also came and talked to me. I told her I paid it because he was my neighbour and not great with technology. Meanwhile in the security office they showed my neighbour the footage and that I had paid his bill for him.

As English is not his first language and technology is not his friend. His message of thanks came across as a little threatening. He has my number in case of an emergency but I obviously never saved his number in my phone.

We all had a good laugh about the incident and we went over and cooked a BBQ at his house and had lunch with him. I slipped the $60 he gave me back into the tea pot I know he keeps his cash in because I never expected him to pay me back. And because I felt so bad about getting police involved.

Guo Zhengliang, chips above 14nm are China’s No. 1 in the world, and foreign manufacturing cannot beat China

From HERE

2022-08-27 14:06 HKT

Being too smart

My IQ is 145 and I very, very nearly screwed up everything. You know, if you’re smart, you have a couple of challenges others do not. I was misunderstood, I over analyzed other kids behaviour, didn’t blend in naturally and the worst: I never learned how to work hard, because everything was so easy.

Until around age 12, I never needed to lift a finger for anything at school. Then in high school, some things suddenly took studying. Not much, but for someone not used to lift a finger, that was hard.

Long story short, I was nearly 30 years old when I finally graduated from university. Even in the Netherlands, where people used to take their time to study, that was kinda extreme. If I hadn’t finally gotten my shit together in my late twenties, I would probably be working a job way below my potential now. And be very unhappy or depressed.

Fortunately, I realized in time that I had to step up my game, and fortunately, I got hired in a job that turned out to be perfect for me. I was very lucky the way things turned out. I am in a good place now. Good job, good salary, own two rental properties and most importantly I have a beautiful stable family.

 

I know there are many high-IQ people like me out there who weren’t as lucky, and live average or even miserable lives despite their intelligence. Life can be really unfair. It’s really very easy to screw life up, even when you have a high IQ. Especially when you have a high IQ.

US media ignored major anti-US military protest in South Korea – Responsible Statecraft

From HERE

From HERE

Be the Rufus

Today I was asked if I am any good with phones by an elderly man as he was trying to open a picture message that his granddaughter had sent.

After putting Sienna in her pram, I took a look at his phone which was a really old Nokia. As he didn’t have a smart phone I told him that he wouldn’t be able to view it. He was gutted and went on to tell me that it was a photo of his granddaughter and her new baby who he hadn’t seen yet as they live in Buxton.

So, I forwarded the message to my phone and eventually managed to open the picture. He was so emotional seeing his great granddaughter for the first time and you could see his love for them both through his teary eyes.

The man insisted on giving me £20 to treat my daughter to a toy as a thank you for helping him which I insisted I didn’t want, but he was having none of it. So, I asked him to wait there and I went to boots and printed the photo for him and ended up buying a frame for it too.

When I returned with the framed photo, he was so happy, literally overwhelmed.

This just made my day to make someone so happy. ❤️

US Coast Guard vessel unable to enter Solomon Islands port to refuel

Why travel half the world to patrol fishing using coast guard vessel? Where is the US coast line?

 

We know that as early as the last century, many Chinese regarded going abroad as a matter of honoring their ancestors. If the children of the family worked and developed in the United States or in a foreign country, they felt that they would have a special face in front of their relatives and friends.

But after entering this century, this sense of pride seems to have vanished.

Most people no longer regard going abroad as a craze, nor do they feel that going abroad will honor their ancestors.

On the contrary, many people are no longer obsessed with going abroad, and they prefer to work and develop at home. On the contrary, some foreign friends, after seeing the environment in China, rushed to China frantically, hoping to get a Chinese green card and work and settle here.

It may be rare in third- and fourth-tier cities, but if you go to first- and second-tier cities, you will find that there are many foreigners around you, who go to get off work, go shopping, etc. with you.

For example, in Guangzhou, China, there are nearly 300,000 black people, and in Shanghai, there are about 400,000 Japanese immigrants.

At the same time, in some developed cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen, there are many foreigners who immigrated to China from the United States.

These people choose China because they feel that the pace of life in China is unhurried, the environment is livable, and the country’s development prospects are bright.

However, look at some people who tried their best to immigrate to the United States. How are they doing now?

Have they lived their dream of prosperity and wealth as they wished?

The fact is very distressing, because after they arrived in the United States, their jobs were mediocre, their economic income was mediocre, and their living environment was even worse.

According to statistics, most of the 4.5 million Chinese in the United States gather in Chinatown.

A long time ago, there was a person named “Queen Snakehead” in Fujian.

She specialized in the smuggling business, mainly helping mainlanders to smuggle to the United States.

You must know that it is very difficult for these people who entered the United States through illegal means to settle and find work in the United States.

Because most people think that as long as they come to the United States, they can have a good life and live a good life, but because it is illegal to smuggle to the United States, they can only do some scattered jobs in the United States.

I work here today, and I might be working in another place tomorrow. If you encounter a boss with bad behavior, you may give him a day of work for nothing without a penny of wages.

However, the welfare treatment of the poor in the United States is ok, and relief food is distributed every day.

Therefore, in places where relief food is distributed in the United States, Chinese people are often seen.

In order to attract more Chinese to join the United States, the United States stipulated that citizens who became American citizens did not need to cancel their original nationality, so many people had dual citizenship at that time.

But this is a unilateral regulation by the United States, and China will never allow people who step on two boats to act recklessly.

China stipulates that Chinese nationality will be cancelled if Chinese nationals possess other nationalities.

Today, the United States has announced that it will deport 200,000 Chinese who do not have American nationality, but these Chinese no longer hold Chinese nationality.

So after the 200,000 Chinese were expelled from the United States, what should they do?

Some notes about Thailand…

[1] Tourist Traps

Well, the reader should recognize that Thailand is an excellent holiday destination. It is where many people go to relax and have fun.  As such, the reader should be advised, there are many traps or things to look out for.  These things can range from a (near mafia like) arrangement of Tuk Tuk drivers and their system of fleecing tourists, to places where locals dare not tread. Here, I would like to place some warnings to the interested reader…

[2] Khao San Road

Hopping off the plane and heading straight to Khao San is a great idea if you are young, white, and into tie-dyes. (LOL!) You won’t find too many locals there.  It is it’s own little enclave that caters to a youthful Western European clientelle. As such, be prepared to be surrounded by the youth of today (with a handful of older folks trying to navigate the clutter) from the Western side of the globe.

To quote;

“The last time I went out clubbing in Khao San the ladies were quite impressed with me because I was wearing shoes with laces. My competition for the fairer sex was a young, bearded pot-bellied boy who was interested in feeling out the clubs with bare feet — a low bar for the love scene. On a positive note he was giving out free hugs to people who couldn’t dodge his outstretched arms.”



-Ronald Tagra

Khao San is an iconic place with cheap beer and lots of “exotic” white people to hang out with. Yeah, just what you want.  Leave what you know and experience what you know in a new location.

It is a tourist trap where the only authentic experience you will have is your hangover. The buckets of red bull and piss are a smashing way for you to get the type of “real” Oriental hangover you’ve always been looking for and the type of morning you’ll always regret. It is also a great place if you want to get on the piss with your friends and enjoy your youth in a slightly different locale than back home.

However, really, if you wanted to just hang out at the same places with the same people, why bother coming to a foreign country? Best to stay in the motherland than to come out to Khao San.

[3] Female Jealousy

“I remember when I first started coming here, even on Khao San Road, I would see sour looking farang women sitting around looking disapprovingly at the effortlessly beautiful local girls, and I would think to myself “Why did you come here, white woman? This place is not for you – go home!””

–Stickman

[4] Social Justice Females

Many female social justice warrior types are absolutely appalled by the fact that men would go to tropical Thailand and engage in sex with women at bars.  They hate this. 

In their mind, of course, there is nothing wrong if [1] the wife blows up to the size of an elephant, [2] stops providing sex, and [3] takes all the money her husband makes because they are MARRIED.

What is wrong (in their minds) is that the husband wants to spend some time drinking, having sex with young cute and attractive slim girls, being treated like a MAN, and spending the money he earned on doing so.

Indeed! How disgusting! Imagine that!

Here are some excerpts from an article written by a SJW. She covers the various stereotypical male types that she has observed on one of her trips to Thailand, and spins her take on it.  Ohhh, the bitterness, disgust and envy drips from her pen;

Article HERE

 “The Angry and Divorced Forty-Something Seeking a ‘Proper Woman’

This city is full of once-burnt divorced men who were either so shattered by their previous marriages — or so disenchanted by the era of leftist feminism — that they felt compelled to move thousands of miles east to find a ‘proper woman’. And by proper woman, I mean one straight out of the 1940s.

“Just let me be a man, while you do my washing, take control of the kitchen and don’t ask too many questions.” Not much to ask. These men tend to shack up with the financially destitute, or the professionally prostitute — whatever improves their chances of exerting total dominance over them in the long run.

With these couples, it seems true love simply equals “You’ll never leave me while I send your parents and buffalos 20% of my retirement fund.”

Oh, she just doesn’t get it.  Does she?  She thinks that it is the failure of the man in his marriage that “drove” him to move to Thailand.

Really, that is what she thinks.

But, it’s not. Nah, but you can’t tell her anything.  She knows what’s right.  She knows everything.  She’s a woman. She doesn’t make mistakes. Right?

She ends her diatribe with her solution to all the men who want to be left alone and to live their own lives, THEIR WAY…

“So, what’s the solution? Ideas on a postcard, please.

My vote goes to mass deportation…”

Advice for Americans who need an address

When I lived stateside and was down on my luck I suddenly found myself living in my car with only my clothes to my name.

How did this happen?

Well, my wife had found a lover, one day I came home early from work and he was in my house and she wasn’t, so I had him arrested for breaking and entering!

Actually, this is an exceptionally hilarious story that I’ll save for another post…

Anyway, I promptly left the house and went to a hotel.

Because my wife was angry at what I’d done to her lover she blocked our bank accounts.

I filed for divorce, but she hired a really good lawyer and the judge gave her everything. I got nothing but the car.

Two weeks later I was laid off from a long-term and well-paying job, but because of the divorce I had very little money saved.

So, suddenly I had a really big problem, but there was no one who could really help me, not even my family.

I didn’t have enough money to get an apartment, so I started to sleep in my car.

I knew that what I really needed was a permanent address, but in my sudden new position in life there was no way I could get one.

Here’s what I did …

I went to a post office (PO) box rental company and rented a box.

Instead of putting down my address as “Box 12” when I was filling out a form, I put down “Unit 12”.

Not once did I ever get a complaint from the mailbox company or the post office.

All my mail arrived without a problem, including government mail.

It’s a really good way to maintain a permanent address if you’re moving around a lot or are temporarily living in your car.

It can even help you to improve your credit rating because it appears like you’re in a stable location for a period of time.

The other thing that I did was I got a gym membership. I’d go to the gym every day to take a shower.

The PO box cost me about $35 dollars a month, and the gym membership was about the same.

So, for less than three dollars a day I was able to stay clean and appear, at least on paper and to everyone else, to be stable.

I lived in my car for eight months before I was able to find a job and then another four months before I was able to save up enough money for first and last month’s rent and get myself into a small apartment.

Would you believe that no one ever found me out? It’s true! No one ever knew!

One of the first things I did after I got my PO box address was to try and get credit.

Of course I was declined, but the address went on my credit rating nonetheless.

I am absolutely sure that the apartment rental agency that I applied to wouldn’t have approved my rental application had I not tried to use the PO box’s address as my own to get credit a year earlier.

To them it looked like I had lived for a year at my previous address and simply chose not to renew my lease. I even said as much when I was filling out my application.

During that year I spent another ten dollars a week at the laundromat to keep my clothes clean, including the cost for laundry detergent.

Toothpaste, soap and other incidentals cost me around thirty dollars a month.

So basically my rent, water, electricity, laundry and personal grooming cost me about $150 a month, five dollars a day.

During the time that I wasn’t working I’d go to various public parks around town and remove soda pop and beer cans from the garbage cans.

When I had filled up the trunk of my car and then some, I went to the supermarket and put the cans in the recycling machines out front.

I got a nickel for two cans and two cents for a single can.

I was actually able to collect enough cans to pay the five dollars a day for my upkeep and also put two gallons of gas in my car so that I could drive around the next day.

Incredibly, I was also able to collect enough cans to buy a liter of water and a package of Tang (powdered orange-flavored drink) every day.

There was even enough left over for a Hostess dessert pie for breakfast, a 7-Eleven microwaveable burrito for lunch and some bread, ham, cheese and fruit for dinner!

My food expenses were about seven dollars a day and it was about the same for gasoline.

So, I lived on a budget of $20 dollars a day for nine months.

Somehow, and I have no idea how, I was able to collect between 400 and 500 cans a day—and I survived!

I have no shame in it, nor in sharing it; it wasn’t my fault to begin with, but in no way was I going to give up. I’m too proud.

Sure, I could have sold my car to rent an apartment, but then how would I get to work or find a job?

By bus? Not so practical in San Diego.

So I did what I did in the way that I did it.

Today, I have a house on the beach and I will buy a second one soon. I have a new wife whom I love and who loves me and we have a wonderful son together.

I’ve worked for 11 years at the same company, so my life is stable once again.

But I’ll never forget that year; it was a true life lesson.

And you know what?

It wasn’t so bad living in my car collecting cans so that I could get through the day!

Get a PO box, get a gym membership, maintain a prepaid cellular line so people can call you, try to get credit, do what you need to do to find the $20 to $30 dollars a day you need and in the end you’ll be just fine!

Good luck!

Cheers!

Biden targets Amish farmer with armed raid and $300,000 fine…

This is Texas

Geopolitical tectonic plates shifting, six months on

14205 Views August 24, 2022

by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

Six months after the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) by Russia in Ukraine, the geopolitical tectonic plates of the 21^st century have been dislocated at astonishing speed and depth – with immense historical repercussions already at hand. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, this is the way the (new) world begins, not with a whimper but a bang.

The vile assassination of Darya Dugina – de facto terrorism at the gates of Moscow – may have fatefully coincided with the six-month intersection point, but that won’t change the dynamics of the current, work-in-progress historical drive.

The FSB may have cracked the case in a little over 24 hours, designating the perpetrator as a neo-Nazi Azov operative instrumentalized by the SBU, itself a mere tool of the CIA/MI6 combo de facto ruling Kiev.

The Azov operative is just a patsy. The FSB will never reveal in public the intel it has amassed on those that issued the orders – and how they will be dealt with.

One Ilya Ponomaryov, an anti-Kremlin minor character granted Ukrainian citizenship, boasted he was in contact with the outfit that prepared the hit on the Dugin family. No one took him seriously.

What’s manifestly serious is how oligarchy-connected organized crime factions in Russia would have a motive to eliminate Dugin as a Christian Orthodox nationalist philosopher who, according to them, may have influenced the Kremlin’s pivot to Asia (he didn’t).

But most of all, these organized crime factions blamed Dugin for a concerted Kremlin offensive against the disproportional power of Jewish oligarchs in Russia. So these actors would have the motive and the local base/intel to mount such a coup.

If that’s the case that spells out a Mossad operation – in many aspects a more solid proposition than CIA/MI6. What’s certain is that the FSB will keep their cards very close to their chest – and retribution will be swift, precise and invisible.

The straw that broke the camel’s back

Instead of delivering a serious blow to Russia in relation to the dynamics of the SMO, the assassination of Darya Dugina only exposed the perpetrators as tawdry operatives of a Moronic Murder Inc.

An IED cannot kill a philosopher – or his daughter. In an essential essay Dugin himself explained how the real war – Russia against the collective West led by the United States – is a war of ideas. And an existential war.

Dugin – correctly – defines the US as a “thalassocracy”, heir to “Britannia rules the waves”; yet now the geopolitical tectonic plates are spelling out a new order: The Return of the Heartland.

Putin himself first spelled it out at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Xi Jinping started to make it happen when he launched the New Silk Roads in 2013. The Empire struck back with Maidan in 2014. Russia counter-attacked coming to the aid of Syria in 2015.

The Empire doubled down on Ukraine, with NATO weaponizing it non-stop for eight years. At the end of 2021, Moscow invited Washington for a serious dialogue on “indivisibility of security” in Europe. That was dismissed with a non-response response.

Moscow took no time to confirm a trifecta was in the works: an imminent Kiev blitzkrieg against Donbass; Ukraine flirting with acquiring nuclear weapons; and the work of US bioweapon labs. That was the straw that broke the New Silk Road camel’s back.

A consistent analysis of Putin’s public interventions these past few months reveals that the Kremlin – as well as Security Council Yoda Nikolai Patrushev – fully realize how the politico/media goons and shock troops of the collective West are dictated by the rulers of what Michael Hudson defines as the FIRE system (financialization, insurance, real estate), a de facto banking Mafia.

As a direct consequence, they also realize how collective West public opinion is absolutely clueless, Plato cave-style, of their total captivity by the FIRE rulers, who cannot possibly tolerate any alternative narrative.

So Putin, Patrushev, Medvedev will never presume that a senile teleprompter reader in the White House or a cokehead comedian in Kiev “rule” anything. The sinister Great Reset impersonator of a Bond villain, Klaus “Davos” Schwab, and his psychotic historian sidekick Yuval Harari at least spell out their “program”: global depopulation, with those that remain drugged to oblivion.

As the US rules global pop culture, it’s fitting to borrow from what Walter White/Heisenberg, an average American channeling his inner Scarface, states in Breaking Bad: “I’m in the Empire business”. And the Empire business is to exercise raw power – then maintained with ruthlessness by all means necessary.

Russia broke the spell. But Moscow’s strategy is way more sophisticated than leveling Kiev with hypersonic business cards, something that could have been done at any moment starting six months ago, in a flash.

What Moscow is doing is talking to virtually the whole Global South, bilaterally or to groups of actors, explaining how the world-system is changing right before our eyes, with the key actors of the future configured as BRI, SCO, EAEU, BRICS+, the Greater Eurasia Partnership.

And what we see is vast swathes of the Global South – or 85% of the world’s population – slowly but surely becoming ready to engage in expelling the FIRE Mafia from their national horizons, and ultimately taking them down: a long, tortuous battle that will imply multiple setbacks.

The facts on the ground

On the ground in soon-to-be rump Ukraine, Khinzal hypersonic business cards – launched from Tu-22M3 bombers or Mig-31 interceptors – will continue to be distributed.

Piles of HIMARS will continue to be captured. TOS 1A Heavy Flamethrowers will keep sending invitations to the Gates of Hell. Crimean Air Defense will continue to intercept all sorts of small drones with IEDs attached: terrorism by local SBU cells, which will be eventually smashed.

Using essentially a phenomenal artillery barrage – cheap and mass-produced – Russia will annex the full, very valuable Donbass, in terms of land, natural resources and industrial power. And then on to Nikolaev, Odessa, and Kharkov.

Geoeconomically, Russia can afford to sell its oil with fat discounts to any Global South customer, not to mention strategic partners China and India. Cost of extraction reaches a maximum of $15 per barrel, with a national budget based on $40-45 for a barrel of Urals.

A new Russian benchmark is imminent, as well as oil in rubles following the wildly successful gas for rubles.

The assassination of Darya Dugina provoked endless speculation on the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense finally breaking their discipline. That’s not going to happen. The advances along the enormous 1,800-mile front are relentless, highly systematic and inserted in a Greater Strategic Picture.

A key vector is whether Russia stands a chance of winning the information war with the collective West. That will never happen inside NATOstan – even as success after success is ramping up across the Global South.

As Glenn Diesen has masterfully demonstrated, in detail, in his latest book, Russophobia , the collective West is viscerally, almost genetically impervious to admitting any social, cultural, historical merits by Russia.

And that will extrapolate to the irrationality stratosphere, as the grinding down and de facto demilitarization of the imperial proxy army in Ukraine is driving the Empire’s handlers and its vassals literally nuts.

The Global South though should never lose sight of the “Empire business”. The Empire of Lies excels in producing chaos and plunder, always supported by extortion, bribery of comprador elites, assassinations, and all that supervised by the humongous FIRE financial might. Every trick in the Divide and Rule book – and especially outside of the book – should be expected, at any moment. Never underestimate a bitter, wounded, deeply humiliated Declining Empire.

So fasten your seat belts: that will be the tense dynamic all the way to the 2030s. But before that, all along the watchtower, get ready for the arrival of General Winter, as his riders are fast approaching, the wind will begin to howl, and Europe will be freezing in the dead of a dark night as the FIRE Mafia puff their cigars.

Don’t mess with the kitty!

A man absolutely hated his wife’s cat and decided to get rid of him one day by driving him 20 blocks from his home and leaving him at the park. As he was getting home, the cat was walking up the driveway. The next day he decided to drive the cat 40 blocks away. He put the beast out and headed home. Driving back up his driveway, there was the cat! He kept taking the cat further and further and the cat would always beat him home.

At last, he decided to drive a few miles away, turn right, then left, past the bridge, then right again, and another right until he reached what he thought was a safe distance from his home and left the cat there. Hours later the man calls home to his wife:

“Jen, is the cat there?” “Yes”, the wife answers, “why do you ask?”

Frustrated, the man answered,

“Put that son of a bitch on the phone, I’m lost and need directions!”

Chinese Gaokou

In China, the gaokao is one of the most stressful periods of a high school student’s life.

It is known to single-handedly decide your future job opportunities and social status within society.

Compared to other college entrance exams in countries like Korea or India, you would think that the test is mostly based off of memorizing and using those “tricks” that are taught at special cram schools.

But some of those questions are actually incredibly thoughtful and creativity oriented.

Take a look:

• Topic: Roads
  Based on the three given uses of ‘road’, write an essay.
  1. “The Earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men passed one way, a road was made.” —Lu Hsun (Lu Xun)
  2. There is no such thing as a road that dare not to be walked, only people who dare not to walk it.
  3. You may take the wrong road sometimes, but if you keep walking, it will become a brand new road.
  (From Fujian)
• Topic: Do butterfly wings have colors?
  “A teacher asked the students to look at butterflies under a microscope. At first, they thought the butterflies were colorful, but when they looked at them closely, they realized that they were actually colorless.” Based on this story, write an essay.
  (From Anhui)
• The containers for milk are always square boxes; containers for mineral water are always round bottles; round wine bottle are usually placed in square boxes. Write a composition on the subtle philosophy of the round and square.
• Who do you think is the most glamorous person? A biotechnologist who led his company in international research, an ordinary welder who gained international fame through his work, or a photographer complimented widely for a series of photos?

Chinese Laser

Many things are made in China that are against the law in the United States. They are either too powerful, too cheap (competition issues), use materials that are judged as "bad" or just are unregulated and thus are considered to be dangerous. -MM

“Ask her if it’s powerful.” I said to my co-worker. He spoke in Mandarin to the woman at the market stall, and she casually pushed a button on the black baton.

A bright blue rod immediately connected the object to a cinder block wall across the street. Without saying a word, she casually pulled a cigarette from the pack on the counter, put it in her mouth, leaned forward, and lit the tip of her cancer-stick in the laser’s light beam.

“I don’t care what it costs. Tell her yes.” After some negotiating (because I think she understood “I don’t care what it costs.” but I did care) and $60, I got a Jedi-light-saber set-shit-on-fire mobile death ray.

To prevent any accidental/catastrophic airline excitement, I disassembled it into a few pieces and put some bits in my checked bag and the rest in my carry-on bag.

Not that practical for daily use, and despite the look of the packaging – definitely NOT for kids, but absolutely fun.

World War 3 for dummies

They ride on dolphins.

 

Now you might think that this is very amusing.

And that dolphins are so friendly and let others ride.

 

But dolphins like to eat octopuses.

And this one had no chance of getting away.

So he did the smart thing.

 

As long as he sits on the dolphin, the dolphin cannot eat him.

 

I have no idea how THAT turned out.

But he deserved to get away with it.

.

From HERE

Well, duh! The only customer it has is China. When the United States just decided to make "pronouncements" on what companies, and nations can and cannot do, they did so with no consideration of the impact. ASML was facing bankruptcy if it obeyed the United States "sanctions".  So they went ahead and defied the USA. -MM

The entry of 23 DUV lithography machines will obviously help the production of domestic chips. First of all, we can intuitively see that in the first half of this year, the number of imported chips in China decreased by 29 billion, which greatly reduced the dependence of Chinese enterprises on imported chips.

The United States is naturally unhappy, but ASML’s attitude this time is very tough.

They said that China is an important part of the global chip industry chain.

If cooperation with China is stopped, the world semiconductor supply chain will face the risk of disruption.

ASML is in a hurry and speaks very clearly. On the one hand, there is now a shortage of chips in the world, which has already affected the production of semiconductor equipment.

If China’s production capacity cannot be released, it is estimated that few in the world’s semiconductor industry will survive for another two years.

 

On the other hand, ASML itself is also facing a serious impact on the supply of raw materials, and it urgently needs to deepen its cooperation with China.

The production of lithography machines requires a raw material called “neon gas”. 20% of ASML’s neon gas comes from Russia and Ukraine, but due to local American law, ASML was “cut off” from this source of supply.

And it happens that China can provide neon gas, and the monthly output of domestic integrated circuits can exceed 30 billion, both of which are urgently needed by ASML.

Of course, there is another aspect, that is, ASML does not want the Chinese market to change from a big customer to a rival.

Just like Huawei did to Qualcomm before.

ASML does not want to force China out of the second ASML because of the selfish desires of the United States.

Now the EUV lithography machine is unique to itself, but who can guarantee the future?

Before the emergence of Kirin chips, did anyone think that China also has the ability to develop high-end chips?

You know, our localized semiconductor supply chain has made a lot of progress.

Domestic lithography machines now occupy the mainstream of the domestic market. Although the technology ceiling is definitely not as good as ASML, not all semiconductor equipment needs such good chips. The mainstream of the market is still dominated by mature process chips.

Therefore, for ASML, instead of being controlled by the United States and then disappearing into the so-called “price”, it is better to just face it, and maybe there is a way to survive.

Imagine That!

My ancestors hail from the Vologda region in the Russian North. When I visited my grandparents in summer, it usually took me a week to get used to their dialect of the Russian language.

Little did I know that a person from India who knows Sanskrit would need about that much time to understand the dialect without a translator.

A professor from India, who arrived in Vologda, almost immediately turned down his translator’s services. “I can understand Vologda dielect,” he said, “because they speak corrupted Sanskrit.”

It turns out, the entire area of Vologda is linked to Sanskrit and Indian culture.

The region is located at the confluence of the river Dvina (“divine, sacred” in Sanskrit) and its tributary Sukhona (“easy to cross” in Sanskrit). Other rivers with Sanskrit names in the region: Vel (border, riverbank); Valgu (nice lovely); Indu (a drop); Lal (play, overflow); Padma (flower of a water lily, lotus).

Vologda lace knitting is world famous. Little did I know that my female ancestors knitted Indian patterns.

Vologda ethnographer Svetlana Zharnikova accompanied an Indian folk band on a trip down the Sukhona river.

The head of the ensemble, Ms. Mihra, was shocked by the ornaments in Vologda national costumes. “These,” she would exclaim enthusiastically, “are native to Rajasthan, and this one is from Aris, and these ornaments are what we have in Bengal.”

It turned out that even the technology of embroidery of ornaments is called the same in the Vologda region and in India. Our craftswomen call embossed smooth surface “chekan”, and Indians call it “chikan”.

However, not just the Vologda dialect, but the Russian language sounds very similar to Sanskrit.

In the 1960s, the Indian specialist in Sanskrit Durga Prasad Shastri visited Russia. After two weeks, he told his translator Mr. Gusev, “Stop translating! I understand what you are saying. You are speaking here some altered form of Sanskrit!”

Having returned to India, he published an article on the similarities of the Russian and Sanskrit languages. Here is a quote from the article:

“If I were asked which two languages ​​of the world are most similar to each other, I would answer without any hesitation: Russian and Sanskrit. And not because some words are similar. Common words can be found in Latin, German, Sanskrit, Persian and Russian. What surprising is that the word structure, style, syntax and even grammar rules are too similar in the two languages to be a coincidence.

“When I was in Moscow, they gave me the keys to a room 234 at the hotel and said “dwesti tridsat chetire ”. In bewilderment, I could not understand whether I was in Moscow or in Benares two thousand years ago. In Sanskrit, 234 is “dwishata tridasha chatwari.”

Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the researcher of the origins of the Indians, published his book “The Arctic Home in the Vedas” in 1903.

According to Tilak, sacred books, the Vedas, written more than three thousand years ago, “tell about life of the distant ancestors near the Arctic Ocean. They describe endless summer days and winter nights, the North Star and the northern lights.”

Nike and Adidas are blaming COVID for low China sales, but the numbers don’t add up – SupChina

Note: the real reason is Chinese consumers turn away from the US firms due to their boycott of Xinjiang cotton, etc

I say BULLSHIT. Stores are all open in China during the lockdowns, and severe lockdowns, for the most part last under ten days. -MM

Chinese Tomato Egg-Drop soup

Bowls of tomato egg drop soup are commonly seen on tables in Chinese households, especially in the summertime when tomatoes are plentiful.

Tomatoes and eggs just go together, and many food cultures know it. Just think of Shakshuka in the Middle East, “Eggs in Purgatory” in Southern Italy, and another Chinese classic, stir-fried tomato and eggs.

If the thought of making soup in the middle of summer has you scratching your head, read on!

Tomato Egg Drop Soup: A Summer Staple

Having soup in the summer is unthinkable to many. But if you let me take you back to the many hot summers I spent in Shanghai, you’ll find out why people in those days did exactly that.  

Summers in Shanghai can be hot and humid. Before the age of A/C, the only relief from the heat might be an occasional splurge on a red bean ice pop, a palm fan, cold mung bean soup (there is that “soup” word again), a cup of cool water, or some melon. 

In the narrow alleys of densely populated, low residential buildings, there was not a leaf or patch of grass to be found. We had to pour water on the building walls to cool them down towards the end of the day, because by then, it was a lot cooler outside than inside.

Most families ate outside, and some kids even slept outside on makeshift beds. We all had a soup on the dining table, rotating from tomato egg drop soup (most popular) to tomato potato soup, and potato with xian cai (Chinese preserved mustard greens). Soups were usually made in late morning and allowed to cool for lunch and dinner.

These soups replenished our bodies with water and salt (along with vitamins and protein), and since the heat meant lower appetites, it was easier to eat.

Serve Hot or At Room Temperature

When we ate this soup in the old days, it was served at room temperature, rather than piping hot.

That said, serve this soup at whatever your preferred temperature is. Now that I can sit in comfortable air conditioning, I’ll serve it warm or hot.

It doesn’t get much simpler than this recipe, but the flavors are really delicious. The eggs in chicken stock create a rich flavor that contrasts with the tart tomatoes. Scallions and cilantro can be added for brightness, and you have a soup that’s the perfect accompaniment to any meal.

Tomato Egg Drop Soup Recipe Instructions

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a soup pot or wok over medium low heat. Add the tomato chunks and stir-fry for 5 minutes until the tomatoes are softened and start to fall apart. 

Add in 1 cup chicken stock, 2 cups water, 2 teaspoons light soy sauce, 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil, 1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper and salt to taste.

Bring to a boil, and then lower the heat so that the soup is simmering with the lid on.

Now quickly beat the egg in a small bowl and prepare the cornstarch slurry in a separate bowl.

Use a ladle to slowly swirl the soup in a whirlpool motion. Keep swirling as you pour in the cornstarch slurry until well incorporated.

Now pour a thin stream of egg into the middle of the whirlpool as you slowly swirl the soup. This is how you get that pretty egg drop effect.

Serve hot or at room temperature. Ladle the soup into bowls and garnish with chopped scallions and cilantro, if using.

Cheers as Liz Truss says she’s ready to press nuclear button and unleash ‘global annihilation’

Article HERE

Liz Truss has said she would be “ready” to use the UK’s nuclear arsenal if she was to become prime minister.

The Tory leadership frontrunner said she would be willing to press the nuclear button, even if it meant “global annihilation”.

Speaking at a hustings event in Birmingham, Truss spoke with Times Radio host John Pienaar, who said it would make him feel “physically sick” if he was faced with the decision.

Truss said the duty was an “important duty of the prime minister”, and received a round of applause after saying she would have no problem ordering the use of the UK’s nuclear arsenal if necessary.

Pienaar told her: “One of the first things that will happen when and if you become prime minister, you’ll be ushered into a room, a very private room at Number 10, and there will be laid out in front of you what are called the letters of last resort.”

Visiting India was my entire “bucket list.”

By the time I reached 60 years old, I abandoned any dream of seeing India.

In 2014, we were among 15,000 people stuck at the Dallas airport overnight, due to cancellations, trying to get home to Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. We were in line to speak with a customer service person when I noticed a young Indian woman behind me, looking quite concerned and anxious. I struck up a conversation with her and learned that she was an astronomer visiting the U.S. for the first time and scheduled to give a talk at the VLA (“Very Large Array”) the following afternoon.

We took her under our wing. That evening, we gave her the only cot we could find so that she could sleep comfortably. Though American Airlines said she couldn’t fly out until the next evening, my wife complained repeatedly and got her a flight the next morning. When my wife managed to get a second seat on that flight, she insisted that I accompany the young woman to be sure she got to NM safely (My wife got a flight an hour later).

After dropping her off with the people who were waiting for her, I gave her a big hug and told this awesome young woman, whom we had come to know pretty well by now, “My family just grew by one.” The three of us became Facebook friends. The former head of the VLA arranged a ‘professional tour’ of the VLA and took us to dinner to thank us. The young Indian woman visited our home before leaving New Mexico. She began referring to us as her “American parents.”

By the end of 2014, she announced her marriage engagement and requested that her “American parents” attend her March 2015 wedding in Kolkata, India. Not as guests, but as part of her wedding party! We flew to India. Her family put us up in a “service apartment” and delivered homemade food daily.

After a week in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) for this memorable wedding, we flew to Jaipur for a week and then nearly a week in Delhi. I finally got to visit India… all because I helped a stranded young lady at an airport.

Two Indian Quora friends wanted to hear all about our trip to India so, two days after we returned, I wrote a modest travelogue with photos.

By the end of 2015, more than 100,000 Indians read what I wrote! (Today, that number has grown to nearly 700,000!) Since then, my “international family” has grown. I have made many close online friends in India …mostly young people through Quora and Facebook. They are Hindu, Muslim, Sindhi, Sikh, and Jain. In most cases, our early interactions involved discussing differences in cultures and religion. Eventually, some of them began sharing their lives and situations and asking for my advice. I did my very best to help. They began calling me “Baapu”, “Baba”, “Touji”, “Papa Rick”, “Dad” and “Angel Paa” (Her dad is “Paa”… I’m “Angel Paa”) <3.

In 2017, we returned to India for 33 days. More than a dozen of my “unofficially-adopted” Indian sons and daughters insisted that we stay in their homes. We wound up staying with five of them in Jaipur, Kota, Ujjain, Indore, and Amravati. They are the sons and daughters of my heart. I tell my American friends that we were not in India as tourists this time… we were there to meet family.

When I retired and wrote, “MiXED NUTS or What I’ve Learned Practicing Psychotherapy” I was pretty much convinced that it would be my fourth and last book. Then this whole connection with India and young Indians happened. The story took too long to tell verbally or in a blog so, in 2018, I wrote a book describing this entire experience, including what it was like to meet and spend a week with each of five Indian families. Released internationally in February 2018, it’s called, “American Baapu: India Through My Eyes”. I even found an Indian publisher so that Indians could buy copies they could afford. This was important because that book is my “love letter” to the people of India.

When I was writing, “American Baapu”, I was faced with the problem of who would write the Foreword of my book. The Foreword is where an expert tells the readers something positive about the author including why they should read the book. Where would I find an “expert” on such an experience? One of my Indian “daughters” suggested that she and the others could each write why they call me “Baapu”, “Angel Paa”, “Dad”, etc. After much thought, I agreed and that became the Foreword of my book. Eight young people in India wrote personal reflections that still make me teary.

UPDATE: We returned to India in early 2019! This time, our seven-week itinerary included Bangalore, Pune, Indore, Ujjain, Jaipur, Aurangabad, and Delhi. Same arrangement. In most cases, staying with people who have become our family and who have made us a part of their family. <3

Aurangabad was a surprise. I had no idea it had such a large Muslim population. Our “international family” grew. The Muslims of India are just Indians who attend a different church. We found the same warmth and inclusiveness we got from our Hindu families. I even returned home with five topis! (Muslim caps).

That little travelogue I wrote online in 2015 has now been read by more than 700,000 Indians! I drum for two kirtan bands in Santa Fe. I put contemporary, danceable, western-style rhythms to traditional kirtan music wearing an Indian kurta or a Modi jacket, most of which were gifts from my Indian sons and daughters.

We helped a young woman stranded in an airport… something anyone might have done. As a result, I fulfilled my lifelong dream of visiting India and my family continues to grow with each passing month.

For a sample chapter of ”American Baapu” join my Quora blog/space at:
India Through My Eyes

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