Conclusion

• RAND calls for World War III against China

Ugh.

This article is saying what I have been saying for years now. America is not going to just lose a battle here, or a battle there. The entire military excursion will be a Waterloo event.

It will be the Stalingrad of all Pacific military forces.

And then, it will move to America.

China will not act alone. Russia will assist.

Then with total dominance of the air by the victorious Asian combined forces will turn all of America into a modern-day Syria. While I do not expect that China will give any mercy, they however, will realistically set up conditions where starving, armed Americans, will kill each other for moldy turnip rinds.

And that’s only with conventional weapons.

Right now we are watching as the Pentagon experts and generals are telling the evil neocons in Washington DC to shut up.

Now, I don’t know if they will be successful…

…after all those evil psychopaths in Washington are crafty, deluded, and living in some kind of insanity (possibly drug induced) that gives this illusion of unaccountability.

Regardless to what those evil psychopathic war-monsters want, I can well imagine that a repeat of what happened last year in 2020.

This was when Trump ordered the Naval Armada to the South China Sea. Eight assault carrier steamed to China. They were intended to seize some outlying Chinese held islands in the inner island defensive chain.

But you know, nothing happened.

The commanders refused. They steamed home, and President Trump fired the leadership.

Again, we can expect, that reasonable leadership will refuse to engage either China or Russia or both.

They will refuse.

Just like late Summer 2020. And the sitting American President will fire his military staff for refusing to die.

The Chinese are subtle.

They speak softly and kindly and carefully.

During the “heat” of the anti Uighur Muslim “issue”, China responded with a video. It is below. Pay attention to the array of messages that are subtly embedded within it.

The video below is an Army unit located in Xingjiang to defend against insurgency movements by the United States to block the BRI. 

If you note, those are not SCUD missiles. Aside from a host of Medium Range ballistic missiles (DF-21 and DF-26), and if you look carefully, the DF-5C, additionally there are also DF-31A and DF-41 weapons presented as part of the defensive force. 

What is China trying to say?

Along with the destruction of nearby military bases, will be the simultaneous destruction of major American cities. These missiles are long range city-flatteners.

Look at the MESSAGE that China is telegraphing.

Those are nuclear (and neutron bomb) MIRV, hyper-velocity, (with artificial intelligence), long-range, ICBMs.  the DF-31A is capable of hitting every major American city on the West Coast. These are latest generation, decades ahead of America, nuclear missiles that America has no defense against.

If you start moving military against China, China will devastate the American heartland. Any surviving leadership will have to hide in the impoverished American ghettos to avoid the nuclear carpet bombing that will result.

The Chinese do not play.

A final comment

Chinese media has announced (last month), ever since the US pulled that aircraft landing stunt in Taiwan, that not only are military units fully armed with real munitions, and everything (EVERYTHING!) is out of storage, but they fly and run “HOT”.

There’s a high probably the next US / UK provocation will result in “accidental” deaths.

Nothing quite ruins your day like global thermonuclear war. Especially when you are on the losing side.

In America, it’s no longer an issue of “one day the common many will rise up against the evil leadership”.

Ai! It has become something else.

It has become “we need to hang these Washington DC bastards before they get everyone killed.”

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Articles & Links

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• You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
• You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
• You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
• You can find out more about the author HERE.
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If you read any of the Western press (most UK or American) you will get a really distorted view about Hong Kong, and China. You will read things, so many things, that you will just “take in” as truth, and without a secondary source of information, you will start to believe it. And that’s how the “West” works. You keep people stupid and ignorant, and manipulate them in such a way that they “dance” to whatever tune you play.

I have been (by chance) reading some articles out of Hong Kong ( I mean, after all, I live next door to it.) and they (the articles) are very interesting in how illustrative they are to the amazing levels of disinformation pumped out of America and Britain over the last few decades.

All lies. All disinformation. All manipulation.

All the time.

We start with Billionaire Tycoon Jimmy Lai. And if you read the American (and British press) you might picture him as a freedom lover for democracy, and a fighter for justice and the “American way of life”.

• Jimmy Lai: Hong Kong democracy advocate and media …
• Jimmy Lai among five HK democracy activists jailed – Asia …
• Jimmy Lai, other pro-democracy activists given additional …
• Democracy swims against the tide in authoritarian world …
• For democracy, it’s a time of swimming against the tide …
• Exclusive-Adviser to jailed HK tycoon Jimmy Lai says Apple …

Nah.

Not even remotely true. He’s actually sort of like a Chinese version of Larry Flint, with the behavior of Harvey Weinstein , and the scruples of Hillary Clinton.

Here is a great article. Found HERE. It discusses Jimmy Lai’s “operation” in Hong Kong…

Fun fact:

For a newspaper with only 86,000 subscribers. He was mysteriously making HK$95 million every month (12.23 million US Dollars). 

Every time the HK government tried to audit him, a massive onslaught of anti-HK government protests, media, and assaults from both the USA and the UK stopped the effort. On numerous occasions, the UK and US government "stepped in" and put pressure on HK to free him and stop the investigations.

But when HK passed the insurrection law in 2020, his "operations" were investigated and it turns out that he was laundering enormous sums of cash directly out of the United States government for undisclosed purposes.

Just who is this “skuz-bucket”?

[1] The untold story of Apple Daily

By Nury Vittachi 29 Jun 2021

Deception, misogyny and quiet Americans

FIRST, LET’S LOOK AT the numbers which are being omitted in reports about the closure of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper.

NOT BREAKFAST READING

1) Apple Daily printed 86,000 copies a day, which meant that 98.5 PER CENT of Hong Kong’s 6,500,000 adults did NOT buy it with their breakfast noodles.

SIMPLE DECEPTION

2) The Western media is reporting that it was “Hong Kong’s biggest newspaper”. No. Not remotely true. Hong Kong’s most popular newspaper is free tabloid Headline Daily (1,012,000 a day, or more than ten times Apple’s circulation), and in the paid broadsheet category, leaders include Oriental Daily News (530,000 a day), and Sing Tao Daily (253,000 a day).

Hong Kong has always had a hunger for newspapers, and the mainstream voice has always been far, far more popular than Jimmy Lai’s one. That was true in the British era, and is true today, with the same newspaper groups at the top of the pile.

THE BIG STORY IN MEDIA

3) Maybe Jimmy Lai’s paper was top of the web charts? No. Alexa rankings for Hong Kong show HK01.com, Bastillepost and other online media far ahead of Apple Daily (and the fact that Hong Kongers visit mainland China shopping site Taobao significantly more than any local media site should tell us something).

HK01, in particular, has come from nowhere to dominate the local media scene. Lively, up-to-the-minute and often critical of the government, its existence and popularity gives the lie to the “press freedom is dead” trope of the Western media, and is the big story in media that foreign correspondents have all missed.

WHO CLOSED APPLE?

4) Apple Daily was not closed down by the Hong Kong government, but by its own board, comprising local people hostile to China, plus Americans.

The HK$18 million that the government froze was a small sum for a paper for a company with HK$95 million in revenues every month, financial analysts say. The paper itself boasted of having cash accounts of HK$531 million, enough to last 18 months.

In fact, the entire financial picture of the media group is an under-reported, under-studied mystery.

THE INFAMOUS NARRATIVE

5) So why did they close their own paper? As a PR coup, because they were absolutely confident that the international media, which means the Western media, would not tell the real story, but one which fits their anti-China narrative.

Oh, and also, it saves them money.

Apple Daily’s stunning lack of popularity among the good, honest, people of Hong Kong, was only eclipsed by its stunning lack of popularity among advertisers. The group has been losing more than HK$1 million a day, yes, A DAY, (which is more than US$1 million a week), amounting to several billion Hong Kong dollars over the past few years.

The paper clearly did not function commercially as a media company, so any healthily skeptical person would ask themselves: what was it for?

PRO-DEMOCRACY?

Oh, and another thing. Apple Daily wasn’t  “pro-democracy” either.

But more about that later. Let’s start from the very beginning, a very good place to start, as the great poet Oscar Hammerstein II said.

This headline from a UK newspaper called ‘i’ (for “Independent”) shows the typically false reporting characteristic of coverage of this story

CHAPTER 1)  BRUNCH AND PORNOGRAPHY

I FIRST MET Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, founder of Apple Daily, at a politician-packed brunch party in 1995. It was at the luxurious Hong Kong apartment of L. Gordon Crovitz, a senior executive for the Wall Street Journal group. His wife Minky was the perfect hostess.

Garment tycoon Lai wasn’t how I expected him to be, but I liked him. Behind his sad puppy eyes was toughness. He was in the process of launching an oppositional, China-baiting newspaper.

We all congratulated him for taking a step that was clearly brave and very likely foolhardy: he would inevitably get into trouble.

It was only after I had left that brunch party that something occurred to me: the hosts were all right wing United States people, and the invited politicians were all from the Hong Kong opposition. It was like a convention of people who didn’t like China.

MISOGYNY RULES

Over the next few years, Apple Daily carved its place in the city’s media scene over the next few years, and this reporter, like most Hong Kong people, were shocked and horrified.

Lai’s publications made a niche for themselves by taking the lowest of the low paths. There was sex and sensationalism, outrage and scandal, allegations and celebrity gossip of the tawdriest kind, and worse, pornographic stories and  reviews/ critiques of sex workers and massage parlours.

The Hong Kong community is a rather gentle, low-crime, conservative, majority female society, and the present portrayal of Apple Daily as the natural voice of the community was and is deeply misleading.

The paper, crude, brutal and sexist, was for men. Jimmy Lai, in a 1995 interview with the South China Morning Post, said: “Our porn page is not very well done, but we have to have it because man has basic needs.”

LOWERED STANDARDS

Other publications lowered their standards to compete, and the Hong Kong newsstands became embarrassing to walk past. Remember the “downblouse” photo of schoolgirl Alice Patten on the front page with the headline: “The peaches are ripening”?

The misogyny and cruelty to women and children were shocking, with people being hurt constantly – and discovering that the newspaper simply didn’t care.

After a few years, it felt like most people knew individuals who had been hurt by Apple Daily. The Hong Kong public preferred its traditional newspaper voice, and Jimmy Lai’s newspaper could never rise above being a minority interest, thank God.

Another Western media group gets it wrong: the information above was distributed by AFP, one of the biggest news agencies in the world.

One 1998 story, sadly typical of the paper, stuck in my mind: Apple Daily published a feature about an unbelievably crass man who apparently sought out prostitutes soon after his wife had thrown their children out of a window to their deaths before jumping after them.

The paper later admitted paying the man to pose in bed with the sex workers for the photographs, knowing that it would be the most talked-about story of the week.

The paper was in trouble with the law, usually because of contravening the rules against obscene publications, every two or three months.

FLOUTED ETHICS

It also flouted basic journalistic ethics. Chequebook journalism was the norm. In 2000, an Apple reporter received a 10-month jail sentence for bribing police officers to reveal information. In 2019, the paper was widely reported to have given HK$1.5 million to a taxi driver for video footage of a married celebrity canoodling with a woman who wasn’t his wife.

Yes, it also did some positive work, like attacking civil servants for doing their jobs badly, but those few tales became over-politicized to an extent that they were not journalism, but political campaigning for its endless pro-America, anti-China message.

Then one day, I got a call. Apple Daily senior executive Mark Simon wanted to meet me and would like to me to give them some help.

CHAPTER TWO) THE MONEY PIT

MARK SIMON, now there’s an interesting character. People were already wondering if Jimmy Lai’s right-hand man was a CIA agent, given the newspaper’s anti-China stance.

I found the notion unlikely, and not just because we were friends. He was enormous and unhealthy looking, and would be unlikely to pass the most basic fitness tests. Also, he liked the limelight too much to be an agent, although there is a sub-group of agents who do their work in the spotlight.

In a discussion on that topic, someone asked me a related question: If not an agent, was Mark Simon a CIA asset, witting or unwitting?

I gave her a reply that my father’s experiences taught me: “Sweetheart, almost every journalist in the world is a CIA asset, witting or unwitting. That’s how the Western press works.”

ANIMATED NEWS

I met Mark at a coffee shop in Kowloon’s Ho Man Tin district where he introduced me to Marina Shifrin, an American woman who had been hired to write scripts for a new “3D animated news” venture for Next Digital, the parent company of the newspaper. The operation was based in Taiwan, where the group was doing very badly.

The animations were unfunny, getting few hits and were not being widely shared. Mark wanted me to give her the key storytelling points to creating viral media. It was hard to boil down decades of experience into a short lecture, but to sum up, I told her to be authentic, funny, detached and offbeat. We swapped contact details.

I left the meeting pondering how long a principled American woman could stay at such an unprincipled company.

BIGOTRY

For Hong Kong’s majority population a significant problem was Apple Daily’s undisguised bigotry. Apple popularized the term “locusts” for people from mainland China coming to Hong Kong.

This was a horrific mistake in the eyes of this community, where many people had mainland cousins, and recognized that the city’s businesses were reliant on mainland Chinese customers.

But here was the puzzle. Despite the repulsive content, there was a rock-solid partnership between the Apple Daily crowd and American media people—and on particular, the most hawkish and right wing of people in that country.

1. Gordon Crovitz remained closely in the loop. Crovitz’s wife, Minky Worden, was “media advisor” to the Hong Kong opposition for several years. Mark Simon had a US Naval Intelligence background and became president of Republicans Abroad in Hong Kong.

Other media highlighted the fact that Apple-style muckraking made ordinary people feel unsafe

HK PEOPLE GENEROUS

To combat its bad reputation for bigotry, Apple sometimes accused others of the same thing. In 2013, it ran a front-page anti-government “scoop” reporting that Executive Council member Franklin Lam, said: “I utterly discriminate against new immigrants.”

Unfortunately for the reporters, the meeting had been recorded and the tape showed that what he actually said was: “I utterly do not discriminate against new immigrants. On arrival in Hong Kong, they are legally Hong Kong citizens. They are also first-class citizens.”

The truth is that Hong Kong people are generous, and the city has an extensive program to help mainland immigrants settle in.

Jimmy Lai meets Mike Pence: picture from Mike Pence’s office

CHAPTER 3) UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE

The world is being told that Apple Daily is a pro-democracy paper. Let’s talk about that. In 2013 and 2014,  Hong Kong civil servants announced the results of a years-long process to introduce a one-person-one-vote system to this city.

A Chinese University survey of the public showed that some 55 percent of people were in favor of proceeding with the government’s universal suffrage plan, providing that satisfaction could be achieved on the composition of the “broadly representative nominating committee”.

But Apple Daily and the more strident members of the opposition called for the whole universal suffrage package to be jettisoned, as not being sufficiently close to Western liberal democracy. (In fact, the Hong Kong system allowed direct voting for the leader, unlike UK and US systems, where you vote for parties, and the party or the electoral college appoint a leader.)

FAUX OUTRAGE

The Western media, including this reporter, who was writing op-eds for the New York Times at the time, got caught up in the faux outrage, and the path to democratic self-government that Hong Kong civil servants had taken literally years to build was demolished in a single day.

Many academics and journalists (including the present writer), later realized that we’d made a huge error, denying Hong Kong people an important chance to take the first steps towards a more democratic system.

GETTING IT RIGHT AT LAST

In Taiwan, Marina Shifrin worked until 3 o’clock in the morning and then made a video of herself holding an “I quit” sign and dancing at multiple locations in the Next Media offices.

It went viral on the internet, winning her 19 million views, plus a job offer of working in televison in the United States. She left Taiwan as fast as she could.

REVOLUTION CONSULTANTS

In late 2014, Western “revolution consultants” revealed that they had been working with Hong Kong anti-China campaigners for almost two years before the “Occupy Central” campaign shut down much of the business center.

Leaked documents revealed that Jimmy Lai was secretly handling the finances for those protests: more than HK$40 million (US$5.2 million) came from unknown sources and went to hostile groups in Hong Kong.

In one of the emails, Lai spoke scathingly about the protest leaders, saying they “could accomplish nothing if there was no help”.

MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

Hong Kong was swept by rumors, later confirmed, that the US State Department had a budget of millions to destabilize China by poisoning minds against the country in its outlying areas – Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet and Mongolia.

Piece by piece, stories of unexplained payments popped up. It became clear that the cash coming through the National Endowment for Democracy was peanuts compared to money from other American sources. But it was hard to find the links between the odd bits of news that popped up.

For example, in May 2016 the Independent Commission Against Corruption highlighted an undeclared payment of HK$250,000 from Mark Simon to an opposition politician. It was not clear where the cash originated.

But by that time, observers of the Hong Kong scene noted that we very often saw the same factors coming together: Americans, mystery money, Jimmy Lai, and anti-China politicians.

AIMLESS VIOLENCE

In 2019, civil unrest again broke out and Apple Daily strongly backed the pro-independence protesters calling for Hong Kong to be “freed” from China, despite the fact that between 80 and 93 percent of Hong Kong people strongly oppose independence.

The protesters wanted Donald Trump to take Hong Kong from China, possibly the worst idea in history.

Bizarrely, Apple Daily gave the biggest encouragement to the aimlessly violent people who had no plan other than to destroy Hong Kong’s economy, close the airport, and generally cause mayhem. There was no conceivable way that the endless destruction of public facilities would lead to more democracy, as Hong Kong people pointed out repeatedly in talk shows and on social media.

Indeed, it was obvious that the process Apple Daily was encouraging could have no possible outcome except to cause Beijing to intervene – which was, of course, the whole point. Accusations that this city was just a pawn in a bigger game in which Jimmy Lai was serving the United States became impossible to dismiss.

THE US RIGHT WING

Also clear was that Jimmy Lai strongly favored the right wing of the United States, since they were more actively anti-China. In May, 2020, Jimmy Lai launched a  #TrumpSavesHK campaign on its front page. “Trump is a statesman,” Lai wrote in the newspaper in October.

Behind the scenes, Apple Daily dug into its coffers to commission a fake report “revealing” that Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden had secret dealings with China. Managed by Mark Simon, the project was a direct bid to interfere in the US elections, and ensure a Trump win.

Again, we saw creative, out-of-the-box thinking, but also an appetite for deliberate deception of the public – the journalist credited with writing the dossier didn’t exist, but was a fake name with a computer-generated face.

Throughout this period, the paper called for international sanctions on Hong Kong, even though the city was being hammered for reasons mired in disinformation. I don’t think anyone taking a genuinely detached look at the paper’s actions over the past few years could possibly call it pro-democracy, or even pro-Hong Kong. It worked instead to actively harm this community.

Oh, and the misogynistic harm to women and children has continued. Earlier this month, Hong Kong saw the end of a court case involving Apple Daily staff pretending to be related to a female celebrity in order to get a birth certificate for her child, which they then published.

ON BOARD

This month, the board of Apple Daily, not the Hong Kong government, closed the newspaper.

Who is on the board? There’s American journalist Mark Clifford. There’s L. Gordon Crovitz, the charming but staunchly right wing former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, who invited me to that brunch party at his home 26 years ago.

His wife Minky Worden has become a key voice in the US campaign against the 2022 Winter Olympics in China.

Ms Worden is a senior staff member at Human Rights Watch, a group which has been criticized by more than 100 cultural figures, including Nobel Peace Laureates, for its  “close ties to the government of the United States”.

Since Olympic activities in mainland China always involve Hong Kong city too, the success of her campaign would further harm the long-suffering people of this city.

LEFT SUDDENLY

Meanwhile, Mark Simon, who told journalists he was in Hong Kong to stay, left the city suddenly to move to Taiwan shortly before the promulgation of a US-style security law, which among other things, targets people who take overseas money to interfere in local politics.

But of course none of this will be covered in the international media. It doesn’t fit the narrative.

The Western media will repeatedly report that Beijing is to blame for Apple Daily’s problems in Hong Kong, hoping and praying that no one will point out the key fact that demolishes the argument: The newspaper group has been even more of a disaster in Taiwan, where it has stopped all its print publications, despite the island allegedly having glorious USA-Style True Democracy. USA! USA!

TALK TO HONG KONG PEOPLE

If you want the real story of this newspaper, perhaps speak to the 98.5 per cent of Hong Kong adults who did not buy a copy of Apple Daily with their breakfast every day.

And perhaps spend a moment reflecting on Jimmy Lai’s connections with the right wing of the United States, and what the jailed publisher thinks of Hong Kong’s anti-China movement – that they “could accomplish nothing if there was no help”.

[2] And now to Cuba

Here’s what the Hong Kong folk feel about Cuba. After all, America now has it’s sights on invading it, or starting a war there… oh, you know… for the usual reasons.

• Biden says Cuba is a ‘failed state’ and calls communism ‘a …
• Statement by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on Protests in …
• Cubans take to streets in rare protests over lack of …
• Cuba sees largest protests in decades as economy …
• Why has Cuba exploded in protests? It goes beyond the U.S …
• Cuba’s Protests Are Bigger and Angrier Than Ever Before
• Biden facing pressure from all sides to respond to Cuba …
• Some U.S. politicians voice support for Cuba protesters as …

Yah. Any day now, America is going to invade Cuba for Freedom™ and democracy™.

How ‘freedom’ became a scary word

By Nury Vittachi 17 Jul 2021

Destabilization process is now farcically predictable

THE WORLD’S WEALTHIEST, most militaristic country (The United States) wants to deliver “freedom” to Cuba, a tiny community which has committed the unforgivable sin of doing things in a more socialist way. But whatever your politics, the extraordinary re-purposing of the word “freedom” as a tool to amplify unrest and distort discussions should concern us all.

Hong Kong people, in particular, have seen this entire process before. In fact, we could pretty much write the script for what’s happening in Cuba ourselves. Ten things to consider:

1.) Turn on the anti-Cuba social media

Yes, there are social and economic problems in Cuba. That’s how it works. The destabilization process ALWAYS piggybacks itself on genuine grievances. These are amplified with a disinformation campaign.

At least 1,500 of the social media accounts that participated in the #SOSCuba operation were created in a 48-hour period: July 10 and 11, said Julian Macias Tovar, social media analyst.

2.) Turn on the fake tweets.

Cuban internet investigators found the majority of the fake tweets came from the United States.

The tweets focused on the narrative key word “freedom” and pointedly instructed readers to dismiss any suggestion that the US embargo had any relevance to what was happening.

One of the main pro-US social media voices talking to Cubans was a notorious anti-government source called Yusnaby.

Yusnaby, Cubans wryly noted, is pronounced like “U.S. Navy” said with an accent.

3.)  Engage the ‘Bots.

Many of the messages came from random “pretty” faces and were bot-signed up so quickly that they didn’t have time to delete the automatically generated numbers after their fake names.

So “Rachel” (see below), who looks like a supermodel, apparently likes to be known as Rachel76039947.

4.) Fire-hose of messages floods the internet.

The entire, huge torrent of messages took a pro-US and anti-government stance, and many said the exact same thing in the exact same words. They were clearly fake but Twitter did not delete them.

Many of the pro-US, anti-government voices on social media joined recently, have no friends or followers, and somewhat unusual names!

5.) Heavy coverage of tiny protests.

The early Cuban protests were small (a few hundred people) but received far more coverage than much, much larger events elsewhere. Independent media outlet BT News noted that more than 100,000 people marched for Palestine, such as in the demonstration pictured below, at the same time, but got far less coverage.

6.) Freedom™ and democracy™

When Hong Kongers see something like this happening, we wait. We wait for the mainstream media to give the protesters/ pro-US side full ownership of words like “freedom” and “democracy”.  At the same time, they will unfairly label the home team/ government as the enemies of freedom and democracy.

Here’s the New York Times doing precisely that in a hilariously blatant manner: “Shouting ‘freedom’ and other anti-government slogans. . . ”!

7.) Lie using fake photos

The small size of many of the Cuba demonstrations was a problem for the pro-NATO narrative.

CNN misleading people into thinking the picture it is using comes from Cuba when it’s actually from Miami, as the street sign shows. TYT repeatedly did the same thing.

8.) American President reads THE script.

By Sunday night, some Hong Kongers watching the process were already waiting for US President Joseph Biden to perform his part in the script, saying something that associates one side with “freedom” and the other with the words “authoritarian regime.”

On Monday, he did just that.

9.) Switch and confuse the videos and images

Below is a widely reprinted NYT report which misled countless millions of readers into thinking this AP picture of a reasonably well-attended gathering was of a pro-US, anti-govt protest, when it was actually a pro-government rally.

Fox News and the Financial Times did the same thing with the same picture. This picture actually showed a pro-government rally. (Spotter: Alan MacLeod)

10.) Amnesty International performs their role

By Tuesday, newswatchers in Hong Kong were waiting for the next standard element in the destabilization script  — which would be for the comically biased Amnesty International to do its normal trick.

Amnesty works hard to produce reports making the home team look like faceless killing machines, and the pro-US, anti-govt side look like young, cool human beings with glorious US flags calling for, yes, “freedom” (libertad). 

On Wednesday Amnesty International did precisely that, as you can see from the lead elements on the front page of the UK organization’s Cuba report, below.

Amnesty International is “comically biased”

NEXT IN THE SCRIPT

In fact, the Cuba protests have been so predictable that Hong Kong people can even tell you the next steps coming up.

• There will be demands for US troops to come and “solve” the problem.
• There will be complaints of police brutality.
• The UK and the US will say they “stand with” one side, as if they know for a fact that group of protesters represents everyone.
• And we’ll all see the same words repeated over and over again — “freedom” on the pro-US side and “authoritarian regime” on the other.

IGNORING THE WORLD

By claiming “freedom” as a sacred principle it owns, the United States has given itself license to ignore the global community.

Just last month, the United Nations overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution to demand the end of the US economic blockade on Cuba, for the 29th year in a row.

The United States ignored it, as did the media.

NO SELF-AWARENESS

This week, a US politician used the word “freedom” four times in a single tweet about Cuba. “America stands for freedom,” said the unintentionally hilarious declamation by Val Demings of Florida.

I’m assuming that staff at the New York Times have enough self-awareness to know that the word “freedom” used in the American way is seen by people outside the US as a joke – but I may be wrong.

Perhaps some US citizens have a more sophisticated understanding of the situation than journalists: the humorous meme at the top of this post is widely shared in various forms and appears to originate in the United States. Here’s another version:

But some journalists don’t get the joke. One of the New York Times write-ups about the Cuba protests included a starry-eye quote from a protester: “What I saw today was people seeing freedom for the first time.”

HOWEVER VIOLENT

For more than 40 years, the world has watched the CIA travelling the globe to rebrand pro-US groups, however violent they are, as the voices of “freedom”, and home teams as the enemies of freedom, however well they feed and serve their populace.

Few people know this better than the Hong Kong people. During the US-backed riots of 2019, a Hong Kong friend posted terrifying images of black-clad thugs, radicalized by endless Apple Daily reports, storming into a spotless train station and using iron rods to terrorize staff and smash everything in sight.

His caption: “Freedom is coming.”

And the reason why I started to read some of the HK news…

yeah. I wanted to do a follow up on who these jackasses were who was attacking my videos of bus rides, sizzling Hunan beer, and cheap wine. I wanted to know!

[3] Rich outlet tries to savage citizen journalists

IN A HILARIOUS BOTCH-UP, the BBC yesterday inserted numerous links to anti-China features into an article defending itself from claims that it was anti-China.Here’s what happened.BBC journalists wrote an article attacking China-based “citizen journalists”. The bloggers defended themselves by saying the BBC and other Western media had a clearly biased, negative attitude to the Asian developing nation.The BBC’s editors yesterday printed the article (above) — but sprinkled it with links (see picture below) which powerfully proved the critics’ point that the BBC is biased against China.In effect, the BBC said “we’re not anti-China — by the way, here’s a link to an article showing how China is a dystopian hellscape! And another one. And another one. And another one.  And . . “.It’s hard not to laugh.

 

It gets better. In fact, yesterday’s BBC article should go down in history as a textbook example of self-defeating journalism for at least four reasons.

First, you cannot argue against the allegation that you present a strongly one-sided view by including a list of article links that prove conclusively that you present a one-sided view.

 

Lee and Oli Barrett, residents of China, have become popular bloggers

SENSE OF IRONY

Second, the article attacks ordinary individual bloggers in China (like those in the picture above) by implying, with no hard evidence, that they receive government cash to do what they do, which is to show China in a positive light.

Yet we all know for a fact that the BBC journalists making the accusation receive  government cash month after month to do what they do, which is to present China in a negative light.

(The BBC’s annual budget is GBP3.5 billion.)

Staff in the BBC newsroom appear to have had their senses of irony surgically removed.

Outrageous! A government sponsored media outlet in China offers money to stringers, the BBC said

THEY PAY STRINGERS

Third, the BBC report reveals, shock horror, that CGTN, a government-financed news outlet, now offers CASH PAYMENTS to STRINGERS!

OMG!

The BBC writers mysteriously forgot to mention that the BBC, also a government-financed news outlet, also offers cash payments to stringers (much larger sums). They’ve been doing this for decades.

I know this for a fact because I was a stringer for the BBC for years.

At this point, I became seriously worried about the toddler-level lack of self-awareness in the BBC newsroom.

Jason Lightfoot is another independent blogger attacked for giving another side of the story

MOTIVATION MYSTERY

Fourth, the BBC writers say: “It’s unclear what drives the foreign vloggers – whether they believe in China’s messaging or are motivated by the lure of local fame and fortune instead.”

It’s only unclear what motivates them if you haven’t watched a single one of their videos. If you do, you can see they are ordinary people doing their best to provide desperately needed balance to the reports put out by dedicated Sinophobes like, well, BBC Newsroom staff, to pick a random example out of the air.

LET’S TALK ABOUT MONEY

Actually, let’s talk about money, something BBC journalists HATE to discuss.

The BBC’s hatchet job presents no evidence whatsoever that the Barretts, Barrie Jones, or Jason Lightfoot are paid a single yuan for having the opinions they have, or for choosing to show the positive side of life in China.

In contrast, BBC journalists have very good salaries for showing the negative side of life in China. I hope the bloggers attacked by BBC journalists Kerrie Allen and Sophie Williams realize they have the moral right to ask them how much the BBC pays them.

OVERPAID JOURNALISTS

I’ve worked at the BBC on and off for decades and I can tell you that some BBC journalists get paid A LOT. When BBC newsroom head James Harding left in 2018, his salary was GBP340,000 a year. Election specialist Jeremy Vine gets more than GBP600,000 a year.

Of course most people in the newsrooms get less than that, but at least 40 BBC journalists are paid more than the British Prime Minister’s GBP150,000 salary, a Press Gazette study showed in 2017. Political editor Laura Kuenssberg gets GBP200,000 to GBP250,000 a year, for example.

Barrie Jones upsets Western journalists by refusing the parrot the US State Department narrative.

FACTUAL INACCURACIES

The ultimate irony is that the unpaid amateurs in China regularly do a better job of covering China than the salaried professionals.

The same BBC article gives a good example of how history changes when that all-important nuance goes missing.

The BBC reporters say “Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan was jailed for four years after making a number of vlogs during Wuhan’s coronavirus outbreak.”

That’s not what really happened. Zhang Zhan was an anti-lockdown campaigner jailed for repeatedly trying to disrupt anti-covid measures. She herself said that she was not a journalist. Her own videos show clearly that she was the Chinese equivalent of the US anti-vaxxer brigade, refusing to follow health guidelines and creating deliberate public confrontations with people trying to follow the rules.

But that’s a nuanced version of her case, which you can only get if you live in this country and talk to people here — rather than attack from the other side of the planet.

THE 50-CENT ARMY

 

The BBC reporters also dredge up the old chestnut about the “50-cent army”, apparently unaware that most Chinese government clickers have been retired, simply because they are no longer needed. They’ve been replaced by real voices who speak out without pay.

An SCMP report about the rise of young people in China defending their community by commenting on social media, making the civil service pro-China “wumao” unnecessary

The so-called “wumao” are no longer necessary now that young people who are sick and tired of their community being misrepresented (groups like the Diba and the fangirls) are providing a robust defense of the country, far more creatively and without the need for payment.

They even create quite stylish memes (see below).

Above is a Diba meme from Weibo

The BBC report also omits the fact that it’s actually US intelligence groups such as the SR (military intelligence) and the CIA which flood social media columns with politically charged fake comments, often easy to spot.

There’s something creepy in the article too.

The “expert” quoted at length in the BBC report is Robert Potter, described as a “cybersecurity researcher”. The BBC omits a key fact that commentator Daniel Dumbrill yesterday highlighted. The top two names on Potter’s organization’s funding list are the State Department of the United States and the United States Department of Defence.

Yes. Exactly.

Think Mike Pompeo, CIA, Anthony Blinken.

The US State Department

So, to sum it up, honest, ordinary people who spend their own time and money offering useful additional views of life in China, from within China, are accused of receiving government cash by distant people who actually ARE receiving  government salaries working for a government news outlet and showcasing the views of people paid by the US government.

NEED FOR INTEGRITY

This is why we need UNBIASED journalists covering China and it doesn’t matter if you have qualifications or not — what matters is that you have enough moral integrity to tell the truth: which is that the community we call China is really not that different from the other major communities around the world.

One last thing: From a professional journalistic point of view, there’s another issue with the BBC article.

Very similar articles have already appeared in other British news outlets. Here is an example below from the Times of London.

Same victims, same news angle, similar headlines, similar allegations, similar quotes.

Copying? Or co-ordination? Journalists don’t normally regurgitate their rivals’ old stories in this way.

There’s something very wrong going on here.

This reporter’s father was one of the first investigative journalists in Asia. He had a saying: “Everything is about something else.”

[4]Switching China for the US is a huge mistake

Australia has put itself at a stark disadvantage by casting its lot with the US instead of the trading partner that has underwritten its growth over decadesUS WRITER AND FORMER military analyst Daniel Ellsberg recently revealed that the Pentagon Papers, most of which were released in 1971, also confirmed that the United States contemplated using nuclear weapons against the Chinese mainland in 1958, to “defend” Jinmen, also known as Kinmen, an island about 10 kilometers from the mainland city of Xiamen, on behalf of the Kuomintang in Taiwan.We need to recall that China had no nuclear weapons at that time－only the US and the Soviet Union did.Ellsberg also said the administration of former US president Lyndon B. Johnson had covertly engaged in a range of extremely destructive attacks against the North Vietnamese forces and their supporters during the Vietnam War.‘NUKING’ A DEVELOPING COUNTRYSo the US, at least from a planning point of view, saw nothing fundamentally immoral about launching a nuclear attack on a huge developing country that possessed no such arms.This was a little over 10 years after seeing the horrific nuclear devastation in Japan. Fortunately, the plan was not implemented.

Manly Beach, Sydney, Australia: picture by Simon Rae/ Unsplash

AUSTRALIA AS COURIER

Even more startling, from an Australian point of view, is the recent disclosure that Australia, was, in 1964, given an extraordinary US-courier task.

Gregory Clark, a former Australian diplomat, has just revealed that in that year, Australian foreign minister Paul Hasluck demanded that the Australian Embassy in Moscow (where Clark worked) arrange a meeting with the new Soviet leadership.

In a meeting with premier Alexei Kosygin at which Clark was present, Hasluck carried a message from Washington, requesting that the USSR join the US in Vietnam to stop the “bad communists” in Beijing and North Vietnam to expand southwards.

Kosygin’s response was blunt.  Moscow would do all it could to support the Vietnamese people in their struggle against US imperialism – and he wished the Chinese would do more to help.

After the commencement of China’s reform and opening-up policy in 1978, however, the US generally welcomed the rise of China.

‘a popular, genial understanding of China as a vast, poor, peasant-based country’

The US relationship with China has gone through a striking transformation over the past century.

Once, compassion was dominant. The Nobel Prize-winning novelist Pearl S. Buck wrote The Good Earth over 90 years ago while living in Nanjing. The book helped shape a popular, genial understanding of China as a vast, poor, peasant-based country with a remarkable history.

TRADE BOOMED

During the period when the US welcomed the rise of China, immense business opportunities were recognized and trade boomed, generating academic, intellectual and general interest in China.

Now that China’s economy is around 70 percent of the size of the US economy in raw US dollar GDP terms, the US has made clear its huge vested interest in seeing the rise of China strikingly reduced and contained.

Thus the US mood has gone from being sorry for China, then helpful to China, to being stridently hostile to China.

‘China does not purposefully threaten Australia in any serious way’

 

Examined rationally, the strategic position for Australia is clear. It has a huge vested interest in seeing the rise of China maintained and enhanced.

China is now Australia’s largest trading partner. Before the recent intense downturn in the Australia-China relationship, trade figures show that Australia’s annual trade surplus with China had topped A$50 billion (US$36.9 billion).

From 1991 until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Australia maintained the longest period of sustained economic growth ever seen within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. China, above all, has underwritten this outcome.

China does not (viewed outside of hawklike think tanks) purposefully threaten Australia in any serious way.

GUSTO AND NAIVETE

The US, on the other hand, does threaten Australia at a more menacing level: first, by encouraging intensified antipathy toward the trading partner who has done more to remake Australia in the last several decades than any other; and second, due to the serious hazard of being drawn into yet more US military adventures－possibly involving certain levels of forceful confrontation with China.

Australia’s relationship with China is very different from that of the US. The acute difficulty for Australia, however, is that Washington has been highly insistent that Australia join in the US-led Sino-containment project. Australia has taken up this damaging new brief with uncommon gusto and naivete.

Collaboration has been beneficial to both sides: Picture by Mimi Thian/ Unsplash

DEEP, LONG-TERM COST

Research by the Perth US-Asia Centre recently listed major income drops in trade with China, to Australia’s stark disadvantage, in areas including travel, education, coal, beef, wine, cotton and barley. In a number of cases, US exports to China have replaced those from Australia.

In 1964, Australia carried messages, like a tributary State, for the US.  Then the dark clouds lifted from Sino-US relations for several decades and Australia prospered, independently, like never before.

The dark clouds had lifted from Sino-US relations for several decades, and Australia prospered, independently, like never before. Now those angry clouds are back, and Australia is once again being told, by its best geopolitical friend, what it must do. It must stand up for US interests, which are called shared values, and never mind the deep, long-term cost to Australia’s national interest.

It is an extraordinary state of affairs that calls for deep reflection and review.

* * *

[5]OMG, those people are pro-China!

By Nury Vittachi 08 Jun 2021

Time to ditch the labels and choose diversity

MY DAUGHTER ONCE asked me if we were “pro-China”.“Sweetheart,” I replied. “We’re pro-everyone. We’re pro-China, pro-Hong Kong, pro-West, pro-East, pro-South and pro-space aliens, especially the latter.”Why would you be not pro any community or nationality? This is the age of diversity.My immediate family includes Americans, Chinese, Brits, and South Asians, and I have several friends whose bizarre behaviour strongly suggests off-planet origins—and the same surely goes for you too, dear reader.

This is the age of diversity; picture by Naassom Azevedo/ UnsplashAt this point, someone will always lean into this type of conversation and say: “Ah, but are you pro-Beijing?”To realize how ridiculous this is, look a Swede in the eye and ask: “Are you pro-Stockholm?” Ask a Honduran: “What do you think of Tegucigalpa?” Or grab a passing Bolivian and ask: “Are you in favor of La Paz?”People around the world don’t generally ask that question.

What the pro-Beijing question really means is: “Do you support the Western media’s demonization of China?”

Now THAT I can instantly answer. Actually, no, I don’t. Criticising others can be okay, if done sensitively and with positive intentions. Demonizing people is not.

Many Hong Kong people are stunned at how so much of the world’s media has ended up like US Republican lawyer Gordon C. Chang, following a Western-penned hyper-critical narrative of China, and blithely dismissing any criticism of his constant de-humanizing of Chinese people. “Demons just hate being demonized,” he explains.

(Chang authored the 2001 book “The Coming Collapse of China”, possibly the worst-timed publication in literary history, coming on the eve of China’s steepest rise into accelerated development and increased community pride.)

But Chang’s hostile angle permeates too much of the international coverage of Hong Kong and mainland China today.

I’ve lost count of the number of Hong Kong people who have looked at the ultra-hostile BBC coverage of Hong Kong and said to me: “What happened to the BBC?” (I usually reply: “Maybe Gordon C. Chang is now chief news editor” and they sadly nod, finding it totally believable.)

Journalists shape their stories to reinforce a narrative: picture by Jorge Maya/ UnsplashMaybe it’s not the journalists’ fault. Andrew Cline, a professor who studies this subject, once said: “Once a master narrative has been set, it is very difficult to get journalists to see that their narrative is simply one way, and not necessarily the correct or best way, of viewing people and events.”

Cline is right. We need to break free from that the narrow groupthink and let a little diversity into discussions.

People are thinking for themselves; picture by Jimmy Chan/ Pexels

• What if. . . China wasn’t a giant gulag at all, but a low-crime society which is thriving at astonishing rates?
• What if. . . Hong Kong’s security laws were demonstrably less draconian than those of the countries criticizing them?
• What if. . . the hundreds of millions of dollars that America spends to try to impose its system of governance on Asia is actually money that would be better spent on other things?
• What if. . . China was communist in name, but actually demonstrated a really interesting mixture of good bits of capitalism and socialism in practice?

I have discovered, to my delight, that the vast majority of ordinary people are completely open to such notions. But Western journalists less so. How can a tiny group of Hong Kong people battle global media behemoths?

Clearly we can’t. But I’m not sure we have to fight them. Journalists are not bad people. There are many good ones among us. I expect. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully. Surely!

And those of us who live in China can gently, perhaps, encourage them to see the other side of the story, by sharing stories of Chinese culture, Chinese business and just personal stories of Chinese people being human.

…

In directly related news, the Friday project has been running for a couple of weeks and response has been fantastic. More than a million people tuned into our conference, and the vast majority of people who responded to our articles have been positive. 

Only a small portion made a response which can be summed up in four words: “Run! Get the Labels!”

To people who throw the label “pro-China” at us as if it was an accusation, I’ll simply give the same answer I gave my daughter.

Yes, we are pro-China. We are pro-humans, sweetheart. And the people of China are humans too, whatever Gordon C. Chang says.

* * *

Conclusion

Just five stories out of Hong Kong. While you might not be getting any daily news reports about this regions except for the “evil communists of China”, the tone of the articles and the over all attitude of their views of America, the UK and Australia should tell you volumes. Please keep this in mind was the next six months advance and “play out”.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

.

Articles & Links

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• You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
• You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
• You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
• You can find out more about the author HERE.
• If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
• If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

Traffic on Interstate 95 is diverted in the area of an hours long standoff with a group of armed men that partially shut down the highway, Saturday, July 3, 2021, in Wakefield, Mass. Massachusetts state police say nine suspects have been taken into custody. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

It’s one day after the fourth of July, 2021.

I woke up this morning and scanned my news feeds. I often just look at the titles. Taking the time to read the content is useless, as most have zero content of worth.

And I discovered this…

• Heavily Armed Militia Group Shuts Down I-95 in Bizarre Standoff…

And when I read the content, it was clear that they were avoiding the fact that these were all urban African-american militants who are traipsing in the Massachusetts countryside far from their homes. In fact, they were “practicing maneuvers” around white-dominated communities and villages.

I wonder why?

Why would they do that?

When interviewed and interrogated by the police, they claimed that they were “Moors”.

At least some of the suspects were clad in military-style gear with long guns and pistols, Mass State Police Col. Christopher Mason said. He added that they were headed to Maine from Rhode Island for “training.”

“You can imagine 11 armed individuals standing with long guns slung on an interstate highway at 2 in the morning certainly raises concerns and is not consistent with the firearms laws that we have in Massachusetts,” Mason said.

In a video posted to social media Saturday morning, a man who did not give his name, but said he was from a group called Rise of the Moors, broadcast from Interstate 95 in Wakefield near exit 57.

“We are not anti-government. We are not anti-police, we are not sovereign citizens, we’re not Black identity extremists,” said the man who appeared to be wearing military-style equipment. “As specified multiple times to the police that we are abiding by the peaceful journey laws of the United States.”

The website for the group says they are “Moorish Americans dedicated to educating new Moors and influencing our Elders.”

The interesting aspects about this entire event are what is not well reported…

• These ethnic individuals are not from the region that they were found.
• The region where they targeted was disarmed by very strict anti-gun and anti-weapon legislation, thus leaving most residents unable to defend themselves.
• The “long arms” were (what would otherwise be reported as) “assault weapons”.
• Everyone wore either camouflage clothing, military attire, or black colored garb.

Curious.

I wonder what this means…

…hum?

Well,

We know that this is not a “new” event.

Meanwhile, let’s see what some of the more learned people on the planet has to say about the current state of American politics and the changes going on in America. And this is a pretty good write up…

Silicon Valley has a monopoly of social capital now. Every call, every text message, and every email is theirs to use as they see fit. This allows them to derive information about the public and use it for financial and political advantage. Tucker Carlson worries about the NSA when he volunteers to carry around a tracking device that records his every movement for the benefit of the Silicon Valley oligarchs.

The great class struggle among white people has also stopped making sense. The old left-right conflict of the prior era manifested itself as a battle between the working and upper classes. The white middle class in America, for example, operated as a ballast and referee. Both sides of the political class courted them in elections, while making promises to their base in the other classes.

The great divide in this age is demographics. America is increasingly nonwhite and headed for majority-minority status. The politics reflected the old demographics, which was 80% white. Fretting over minority rights, for example, makes no sense in a world where everyone is a minority. It makes even less sense when a unique minority is the ruling elite and has total control of the institutions.

The ruling elite has evolved a colonial mentality in response to the crisis, but white people are increasingly embracing demographic reality. The uproar over critical race theory is an omen of what is to come. This intermediate conflict is between a ruling class that thinks it can keep feeding the alligator, hoping to be eaten last, and a public that has no desire to be erased from the book of life. Demographic reality is the new class struggle.

This July 4th, America finds itself in the middle of a great interregnum, a transition period between the old order and the new order. The reason the buildings that symbolize the political institutions of America remain behind layers of razor-wire fencing and armed guards is not a fear of insurrectionist soccer moms. Those barriers exist as a bulwark against the inevitable, protecting an ossified and obsolete political elite along with the political system that maintains them.

Predicting the future is always a mug’s game. Just as our frozen lefty would be stunned to see how history unfolded, we will be shocked to see what comes after this great interregnum. Therein lies the reason to celebrate. The current crisis environment is a transitory state. It cannot last and everything that cannot last eventually comes to an end, usually sooner than anyone expects.

Well everyone is trying to understand

The USA is in a mess, and everyone is trying to grasp aspects of it in handfuls that they can understand. All the time they failure to see the big picture. Things do not happen in isolation. An event here, or an event there, are aspects of a much larger plan. Whether intended or not.

Intellectuals try to intellectualize it. Patriots try to look at it from a revolutionary angle, and socialists try to analysis the functional vectors of group behaviors.

Hey!

Wake up folks. The dinner is almost ready. The bridge is wobbling and the cables are about to snap. The cattle are restless and the fence is about to go down.

Can’t you smell it in the air?

I can, and I’m far way in China.

Conclusion

Obviously some “Moors” are emboldened to reconnoiter the defenselessness communities of wealthy Massachusetts, while the intellectual class are busy trying to intellectualize the turmoil inside of the United States fiasco.

Why?

What gave them the idea that they could do this?

What the FUCK is going on?

I can tell you all ONE THING. This kind of activity would NEVER be tolerated in China, and it would be taken cared of immediately and absolutely. The fact that the United States is unable to do anything… shows exactly what a huge, colossal, and absolute failure the nation it; the leadership is; and the system is. There is only one solution remaining…

Allow it to collapse.

Let the rot fester, then purge it completely.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

.

Articles & Links

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• You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
• You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
• You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
• You can find out more about the author HERE.
• If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
• If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

One of the things that I have been musing about lately is blueberry muffins. You see, muffins just aren’t all that common in China, and when you find them, they are really over priced and part of a dessert menu that is part of a Starbucks franchise, or similar venue.  I miss them. I miss the hot piping interior, the explosion of blueberry flavor when you bit into them, and that nice pad of salted butter that melts on the top of them.

They used to be quite common in diners. Almost as common as pies.

Blueberry muffins in automats

But my best memories about muffins come from those automats that my family used to frequent when I was a boy. (Of course in those world-lines automats were much more common than what you find here. Apparently, on this world-line path, automats died out in the 1940’s.) Anyways, my father would give me a quarter and I would get up from the table and go to the little window with a muffin in it. I’d plop the quarter in the slot, and the door would spring open, and out I would take the muffin on the heavy white ceramic plate.

My memories of this are all very clear. And I well remember us eating as a family at the tables. Of course my father would be having a coffee and reading a newspaper. My mother was always fussing over us kids, and generally attending to my younger brother and sisters. I, being the oldest, was supposed to be more mature and more responsible.

Meh.

Blueberry muffins in Salem, Massachusetts

And while those memories are true treasures for me, they are a little dated in that my best muffin experience that I ever had did not occur in an automat. It occurred in a wharf coffee house in Salem, Massachusetts. It was a dark and stormy night and I was riding my motorcycle with a girl, and we pulled into the complex. It was the late 1970’s, and I was still in university.

The world outside was but sheets of rain, dull blues and greys, a howling wind and drops of rain that stung when they hit you.

But through the windows of the coffee house was inviting warmth, a pleasant and cozy atmosphere, and a calming shelter against the storm. When the waitress brought out the blueberry muffin, it was fresh, hot and toasty, and had two pads of butter on the plate that I dutifully added on top. You could see the whiffs of steam rising up off the muffin, and they formed strings next to the the hot steamy fragrant coffee that sat besides it.

Personally, I don’t think that many people appreciate blueberry muffins. It’s sort of the “bad boy” of the muffin family, and is great overshadowed by it’s more popular cousins; the chocolate and the cranberry muffins.

But the point behind this is the little coffee house was a unique moment, a unique place, in a unique time, while a raging storm crashed and banged outside. And while we, my girlfriend and myself, were grateful for the shelter from the storm, the workers were oblivious to it. They had spent all day inside. Sure they knew that there was a storm outside, but they were detached from it. It was remote from their direct and personal experience. They knew about it, but they didn’t appreciate the environment like we outsiders did.

It was almost like they were in their own little protective bubble; a safe world, where they could live, work and exist free of the tumult outside.

Like a hot house.

Hot Houses

A hot house is a conservatory where flowers and plants are grown under controlled conditions. The plants live their entire lives inside that environment. They are comfortable there and there is no reason to be concerned about what happens outside of the walls of the conservatory.

I once visited the oldest conservatory in Connecticut, and it was awesome. It was over 200 years old and had many common plants that we consider to be weeds and plants of no consequence in it. But those “weeds” once they turn 200 years old become these amazing tangled plants with thick and interesting trunks, cool branches, and amazing clusters of leaves.

It was awesome. Absolutely awesome.

There’s a conservatory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that is enormous and beautiful as well. But it isn’t nearly as old. And so while it is a pleasure to go from room to room and experience the different kinds of plants and flowers, it’s really the very ancient hot houses that are amazing. It’s really something else to see what happens when plants live within these stable and sheltered environments for really long periods of time.

What I remember the most about my trip to the conservatory in Connecticut, was not simply the cool plants, and the nooks and crannies filled with the most curious of antiquated Bric-a-brac. But it was the very cool diner that we visited on the trip back home.

A very cool diner

Long time MM readers will appreciate my love of diners and local regional stories.

I will never forget that diner. Though I have forgotten it’s name, and location. They had a “blue plate special”. And you know, I am always one for a good “blue plate special”. You know, is it just me, or I’ve never had a “blue plate special” on a blue plate. It’s one of those head scratchers.

Anyways, I had a “blue plate special”. It was a hot pastrami sandwich with cheese, fully “dressed” with a side of coleslaw and a side of “longhorn” fires covered (smothered) in beef gravy. Now, I don’t know why they called the fries “longhorn fries. Basically, they were huge thick french fries. Perhaps three times the width of a regular french fry. Oh, with a iced tea or Coke.

And I, of course enjoyed every morsel of it.

It looked a little bit like this…

I do believe that one of the lest appreciated characteristics of America is it’s diners. A diner is the lunch counter for the American work force. And in the days when American worked in factories, often they would get a “home cooked” (style) of meal at a diner. This was always preferable to the latest in fast food fare.

Diners are great.

And while I was a munching on my meal, I contemplated the conservatory; the “hot house” that I had just visited. For the plants were unlike anything outside. These plants were not only gorgeous, but huge.

Without the need to deal with weather changes, the encroachment of man, pesticides, and strip mining, they were able to thrive and grow in ways that was impossible in the real, actual environment.

Echo Chambers

We often talk about people being in an “echo chamber”. That is that they surround themselves with like-minded people who echo each other’s points of view. And then, over time, without getting any new ideas, their points of view become stale and more outlandish over time. To a person outside that “echo chamber” they seem crazy, odd, distorted, and mentally deranged.

In discussions of news media, an echo chamber refers to situations in which beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a closed system and insulated from rebuttal. 

By participating in an echo chamber, people are able to seek out information that reinforces their existing views without encountering opposing views, potentially resulting in an unintended exercise in confirmation bias. 

Echo chambers may increase social and political polarization and extremism. 

The term is a metaphor based on an acoustic echo chamber, in which sounds reverberate in a hollow enclosure. 

Another emerging term for this echoing and homogenizing effect within social media communities on the Internet is cultural tribalism. 

Many scholars note the effects that echo chambers can have on citizens' stances and viewpoints, and specifically implications has for politics. 

-Echo Chamber Wikipedia

I would imagine that were the plants to chat with each other inside the “Hot House”, that they would be unaware that they were within an “echo chamber”. And as long as the walls of the conservatory were solid and maintained, they were safe, secure, and could live their lives and prosper. They would grow to become huge, beautiful and magnificent.

The following is a reasonably decent article.

Of course all credit to the author, note that it was reprinted as found, but with slight editing to fit this venue.

While you are reading it, maybe you might want to fix yourself a “Dagwood sandwich” and munch while absorbing the content.

Conclusion

And it was well stated.

The American Empire is being ruled by people who have been in the “hot house” for way too long. They have grown large, powerful, and (even) beautiful in a way. We look at them in amazement. We watch their brazen actions, and their odd statements like we would a monkey in a zoo. Curious. Mischievous. Maybe even a little dangerous.

But not one of us.

They, like their ilk in Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, in the Soviet Union, in the Palace of Versailles, the leadership behind their tall walls are slowly losing their collective minds. They are no longer part of society. And some may even question if they are part of the human race.

Such as MM here.

All empires fall, but the rot crumbles from within the top tiers of the leadership.

We are watching this today, in real time. And it’s slow. Really slow. Like a sloooow motion train wreck.

We need not worry too much about their madness, that is unless they start making crazed laws, rules, pronouncements or engage in wars that can affect you. Because that is the great concern.

Truthfully, most Americans realize that everything in America today is a farce. Elections are a farce. Political parties are a farce. American “greatness” is a farce, and “freedom, liberty, and justice for all” is a sad, sad farce.

That instead, America is a out-of-control military empire, and the the much touted “democracy” model is a complete and abject failure.

But you know, that shouldn’t, and needn’t be your concern.

What should be your concern is how you, and your community will be able to weather out their madness.

And yes. It is frustrating, angering, and frightening.

But it is beyond your control. You can either leave the United States of Insanity, or you an stay. Both choices have their good and bad points. I left. But my situation was intolerable and I manufactured a ratty-old tattered “parachute”. No “golden parachute” for MM.

You make the best with what you have.

So, guys and gals, enjoy the ride.

It will eventually settle out and over. One way or the other.

In the meantime, make sure that [1] your larder is well stocked, and that [2] you are surrounded by a community that appreciates and likes you. [3] Perform your prayer affirmations. This is the MOST important thing that you can do. By FAR.

Make sure that you are [4] healthy; mentally, emotionally, socially, physically, and in every other way possible. These times are taking it’s toll. Focus on your well being.

With the basics taken cared for, then enjoy some time in quiet relaxation. That means companionship (whether it is the opposite sex, friends, family or pets) and enjoy some food.

Everyone loves food.

Well, almost everyone. I once met a fellow in a mental institution that hated food. But then again, he hated everything.

This is June moving towards July.

That could very well mean watermelon, corn on the cob, hotdogs, hamburgers, and all manner of fruits and vegetables.

All that calls for a major smunch!

Have a beer.

Call a friend.

Share a beer with a friend.

Make up a spread of cold cuts, vegetables, some potato salad, chips, and plan on some chatting. Even if you have nothing to talk about. Come up with an excuse. Have fun.

You are never too old for fun.

Make up a sandwich, Or two. Or heck, a whole bunch of them. Put some beer in a chest full of ice. Or, make up some sangria. Or heck! Just have a bar and everyone can make their own cocktails.

Don’t let life pass your by simply because your government is run by idiots.

Make it fun.

Maybe use some sweet grandmother pickles. Or, use turkey, ham, pickle loaf, and all sorts of deli cheeses on your “spread”. Allow everyone to experiment.

Like this…

Ah.

Life is too short not to eat good food. Drink good beverages. Spend good time with friends. Whether they are family, animals, associates, or members of the opposite sex.

Just have a good time.

Maybe take a trip to explore a museum, a state park, a pool, a historical society, a small town restaurant, an animal shelter, a fishing hole, or a walk on a trail. Dust off your old bicycle sitting in the garage and give it a spin.

Do something fun.

Ignore the madness in the hothouse.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Articles & Links

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• You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
• You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
• You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
• You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Lately, there has been all this talk and speculation about how the USA is going to “counter” China. All made with the best of intentions by nationalists with little experience, poor or fraudulent Intel, and a lack of awareness at how incompetent the United States actually is today. Yet they own the MSM; the media mouthpiece and everyone desires to go ahead and pick a fight for “freedom™” and “democracy™”.

I have argued over and over and over again that America is very, very fragile. It is more than balkanized, it is tottering on the edge of chaos. And all it would take to send it over the side is China or Russia doing what the US Military is vocally planning to do.

One strike on a city.

It doesn’t even need to be a nuclear strike.

This strike completely collapse “the house of cards”, and all the people in the city will be forced to deal with a very bad situation. Will they come together? Will they work together? Will they [1] obey the advisement’s on the Emergency Broadcast System? Or will they [2] all go their own way, do their own thing, and take advantage of the situation for their own personal benefit?

The answer should be obvious to all Americans.

But somehow, and it’s unfathomable to me, that Americans separate a “war with China over Taiwan”, from “America urban enclaves erupting in an orgy of hate, rapes and killings”.

Because both will happen simultaneously.

China and Russia will make sure that it occurs.

Fifteen years ago we were able to watch what happens when a local disaster hits a city. And it isn’t pretty. I argue that this will become commonplace throughout the United States once the tipping point has been reached.

Are you ready?

The following is titled “Africa in our midst“. It reports on what happened in an American city New Orleans when a natural disaster struck. It is absolutely horrifying. All credit to the MM influencer that turned me on to it. Reprinted as found, all credit to the author, edited to fit this venue.

Africa in our Midst

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which blasted the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005 the entire world saw images that left no doubt that what is repeatedly called the sole remaining superpower can be reduced to squalor and chaos nearly as gruesome as anything found in the Third World. The weather — a Category 4 hurricane — certainly had something to do with it, but the most serious damage was done not by nature but by man.

Much has been and will be written about why the levees that are supposed to keep the water out of below-sea-level New Orleans failed. There will be bitter recrimination about whether the federal rescue effort could have been launched sooner. Commissions will ask questions and lessons will be learned. But there was another human failing that was far more ominous. No commission will study it, and official America will refuse to learn from it. In the orgy of finger-pointing it will be all but forgotten. That human failing — vastly more significant than the ones the commissions will investigate — is the barbaric behavior of the people of New Orleans.

New Orleans is 67 percent black, and about half the blacks are poor. Of the city’s 480,000 people, all but an estimated 80 to 100 thousand left before the hurricane struck. This meant that aside from patients in hospitals and eccentrics in the French Quarter, most of the people who stayed behind were not just blacks, but lower-class blacks without the means or foresight to leave.

Katrina hit on the morning of Monday, Aug. 29. The levees broke on Tuesday and the city began to flood. Before long, 80 percent of New Orleans was under as much as 20 feet of water.

The city’s 70,000-seat football stadium, known as the Superdome, had been officially designated as a public shelter before the hurricane, and several thousand people were already there the night before the storm. It had some food and medical supplies, but when the waters began to rise, people poured in from all directions, swelling its numbers to an estimated 25,000.

People came because their houses were under water, but also because New Orleans very quickly collapsed into banditry. Looting began even while the storm was still blowing. At first there was sympathetic clucking about the need for food and medicine, but news clips of blacks wading happily through waist-deep water with television sets over their heads dispelled that view.

The day after the hurricane, a reporter caught the atmosphere of high-spirited chaos at a Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District. People were grabbing things as quickly as they could, smashing open jewelry cabinets and scooping up double-handfuls. One man packed his van so full of electronic equipment he could not close the rear doors. A teenage girl passed out, face down, and people stepped on her. A man stopped to roll her onto her back, and she vomited pink liquid. “This is f***ed up,” he said, and rolled her back on her stomach. An NBC correspondent filmed black, uniformed police officers strolling through the aisles, filling shopping carts.

At one store, a policeman broke the glass on the DVD case so civilians would not cut themselves trying to break it, but one man was ungrateful. “The police got all the best stuff,” he said. “They’re crookeder than us.” One woman stocking up on makeup was glad to see the officers. “It must be legal,” she said. “The police are here taking stuff, too.”

Violence of all kinds quickly spread through the paralyzed city, where robbery, rape, and even murder became routine. There were still thousands of people trapped on rooftops and in attics, but on Sept. 1, Mayor Ray Nagin called the entire police force off of rescue work and ordered it to secure the city. The response from the force? An estimated 200 officers just walked off the job. “They indicated that they had lost everything and didn’t feel that it was worth them going back to take fire from looters and losing their lives,” explained Henry Whitehorn, chief of the Louisiana State Police. Many disappeared without a word. Sheriff Harry Lee of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans also said his men were deserting. “They want to be with their families,” he said. “Well, I want to be with my family too, but you don’t quit in the middle of a crisis.”

Two police officers, including the department’s official spokesman Paul Accardo, committed suicide by shooting themselves in the head. The London Times estimated that one in five officers refused to work, and some of those who stayed on the job were useless. When Debbie Durso, a tourist from Washington, Michigan, asked a policeman for help he told her, “Go to hell — it’s every man for himself.”

Ged Scott, 36, of Liverpool, told BBC News what happened when a group of stranded British women shouted to police for help from the rooftop of a flooded hotel: “They [the officers] said to them, ‘Well, show us what you’ve got’ — doing signs for them to lift their T-shirts up. The girls said no, and they said ‘well fine,’ and motored off down the road in their motorboat. That’s the sort of help we had from the authorities.”

“No one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans,” explained Lieutenant General Steven Blum of the National Guard. He said the city was operating on only one third of its pre-storm strength of 1,500 officers, and that the guard suddenly had to switch from rescue to law enforcement: “And that’s when we started flowing military police into the theater.”

New Orleans has had only black mayors since 1978, and has spent decades making the police force as black as possible. It established a city-residency requirement for officers to keep suburban whites from applying for jobs, and lowered recruitment standards so blacks could pass them. Katrina blew away any pretence that the force was competent.

(On September 5, exactly a week after the hurricane, Mayor Ray Nagin offered to pay for the entire police force, firefighters, and city emergency workers to go on five-day vacations — with their families — to Las Vegas or some other destination. He said there were enough National Guard in the city to maintain order, and that his men “have been through a lot.” He brushed off suggestions that this was dereliction of duty. He even asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to pay for the vacations, but FEMA refused. “We haven’t turned over control of the city,” a city spokesman explained. “We’re going to leave a skeleton force — about 20 percent of the department — for leadership and liaison with the troops while we get some rest.”)

New Orleans has a high crime rate at the best of times — it is usually in top contention for the American city with the highest murder rate — and looted firearms spilled into the street. Some blacks fired on any symbol of authority, blazing away at rescue helicopters and Coast Guard vessels. Several days after the hurricane, with desperate people still huddled on rooftops, FEMA said it was too dangerous to attempt rescues.

On Wednesday, along one stretch of Highway 10, hundreds of volunteer firefighters, auxiliary coastguardmsmen and citizens with small boats were eager to reach people, but could not set out because of sniper fire. “We are trying to do our job here but we can’t if they are shooting at us,” explained Major Joey Broussard of the Louisiana State Fisheries and Wildlife Division. “We don’t know who and we don’t know why, but we don’t want to get in a situation of having to return fire out there,” he said.

Perhaps the most chilling accounts were from hospitals, where staff desperately tried to move patients up stairs as the water rose, while blacks looted the floors below. Most hospitals had emergency generators, but these began to give out. Two days after the hurricane, the city had no running water, and as food ran out, doctors and nurses gave themselves intravenous feedings to keep going.

Just outside New Orleans, gunmen held up a supply truck carrying food, water, and medical supplies that were on their way to a 203-bed hospital. Patients all across the city eventually had to be taken out, but rescuers met resistance. Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan told reporters at an emergency headquarters: “Hospitals are trying to evacuate. At every one of them, there are reports that as the helicopters come in people are shooting at them, saying, ‘You better come get my family.’” An effort to evacuate patients and staff from Charity Hospital in downtown New Orleans was stopped by sniper fire. Other hospitals reported gangs of looters attacking and overturning ambulances.

Chris Lawrence, a reporter with CNN, filed a report from the roof of a police station: “Right now it’s the only safe place to be in the city. We were on the street earlier but the police said under no circumstances would you be safe on the street. They said anybody walking in the streets of New Orleans is basically taking their life in their hands. . . . They directed some of the young women to get off the street immediately.”

What may have been the most shocking headline of the entire crisis was in the September 2 issue of Army Times: “Troops Begin Combat Operations in New Orleans.” The article was about the Louisiana National Guard massing near the Superdome in preparation for a citywide security mission. “This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones explained. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.” The amphibious assault ship Bataan was in the area, but kept its helicopters on board after pilots reported sniper fire.

Many soldiers came under gunfire from civilians. “I never thought that as a National Guardsman I would be shot at by other Americans,” said Philip Baccus of the 527th Engineer Battalion. “And I never thought I’d have to carry a rifle when on a hurricane relief mission. This is a disgrace.” Cliff Ferguson of the same battalion added: “You have to think about whether it is worth risking your neck for someone who will turn around and shoot at you. We didn’t come here to fight a war. We came here to help.”

Michael Brown, head of FEMA, said: “We are working under conditions of urban warfare.” General Blum of the National Guard said half of the 7,000 guardsmen under his command had just returned from overseas assignments and were “highly proficient in the use of lethal force.” He promised to deal with thugs “in a quick and efficient manner.”

Shoot-to-kill orders were supposed to have gone out, and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco boasted that battle-hardened veterans would put down the violence in no time. However, there were few accounts of soldiers firing their weapons. The London Times reported that a New Orleans policeman explained through tears that he had seen bodies riddled with bullets, and one man with the top of his head shot off. He said looters were armed with stolen AK-47 rifles, and that the police were outgunned just like in Somalia. “It’s a war-zone, and they’re [the federal government] not treating it like one,” he said.

We will never know the full extent of the mayhem blacks loosed on their own city. Many victims will not be found for weeks or even months, rotted beyond recognition, their killers never found. Drowned or murdered, the bloated, stinking bodies that turn up by the hundreds will look much the same. In their haste to get cadavers off the streets, the authorities may not worry much about cause of death.

From Hurricane to Jungle

In the two main refugee centers, however — the Superdome and the Convention Center — too many people witnessed the degeneracy for it to be ignored. The first refugees had arrived at the Superdome the day before the hurricane, on Sunday, August 28. The last finally left the stadium on Saturday, Sept, 3, so some people may have spent nearly a week in what, after the toilets began to overflow, became known as the “Sewerdome.”

Preparation for refugees was pitifully inadequate. By day, as many as 25,000 people sweltered in temperatures that rose into the 100s. Whatever order had been established soon melted away, and the stadium reverted to the jungle. Young men robbed and raped with impunity. Occasional gunshots panicked the crowd. At least one man committed suicide by throwing himself off a high deck and splattering onto the playing field. Bodies of the murdered, and of infants and the elderly who died of heat exhaustion began to accumulate. Six babies were born in the stadium. Charles Womack, a 30-year-old roofer, said he saw one man beaten to death, and was, himself beaten with a pipe. Crack addicts — who had brought their most valuable possession with them — smoked openly and fought over drugs.

A group of about 30 British students were among the very small number of whites in the stadium, where they spent four harrowing days. Jamie Trout, 22, an economics major, wrote that the scene “was like something out of Lord of the Flies,” with “people shouting racial abuse about us being white.” One night, word came that the power was failing, and that there was only ten minutes’ worth of gas for the generators. Zoe Smith, 21, from Hull, said they all feared for their lives: “All us girls sat in the middle while the boys sat on the outside, with chairs as protection,” she said. “We were absolutely terrified, the situation had descended into chaos, people were very hostile and the living conditions were horrendous.” She said that even during the day, “when we offered to help with the cleaning, the locals gave us abuse.”

Mr. Trout said the National Guard finally recognized how dangerous the threat was from blacks, and moved the British under guard to the basketball area, which was safer. “The army warned us to keep our bags close to us and to grip them tight,” he said, as they were escorted out. Twenty-year-old Jane Wheeldon credited one man in particular, Sgt. Garland Ogden, with getting the Britons safely out. “He went against a lot of rules to get us moved,” she said.

Australian tourists stuck in the Superdome had the same experience. Bud Hopes, a 32-year-old man from Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, took control and may have saved many lives. As the stadium reverted to anarchy, he realized whites were in danger, and gathered tourists together for safety. “There were 65 of us altogether so we were able to look after each other, especially the girls who were being grabbed and threatened,” said Mr. Hopes. They organized escorts for women who had to go to the toilet or for food, and set up a roster of men to stand guard while others slept. “We sat through the night just watching each other, not knowing if we would be alive in the morning,” Mr. Hopes said. “Ninety-eight percent of the people around the world are good,” he said; “in that place 98 per cent of the people were bad.”

John McNeil of Coorparoo in Brisbane tells what happened when their group, too, heard the lights were about to go out: “I looked at Bud [Hopes] and said, ‘That will be the end of us.’ The gangs had already eyed us off. If the lights had gone out we would have been in deep trouble. We were sitting there praying for a miracle and the lights stayed on.” Mr. Hopes said the Australians owed their lives to a National Guardsman who broke the rules and got whites out to a medical center past seething crowds of blacks.

Peter McNeil of Brisbane told the Australian AP that his son John was one of the 65 who managed to get out. The blacks were reportedly so hostile “they would stab you as soon as look at you.” “He’s never been so scared in his life,” explained Mr. McNeil. “He just said they had to get out of the dark. Otherwise, another night, he said, they would have been gone.” No American newspaper wrote about what these white tourists went through.

When guardsmen began to show up in force on Sept. 1 and take control, some blacks met them with cheers, but others shouted obscenities. Capt. John Pollard of the Texas Air National Guard said 20,000 people were in the dome when the evacuation began, but thousands more appeared from surrounding areas when word got out that there were buses leaving town. Soldiers held their M-16s and grenade-launchers at the ready, and kept a sharp eye out for snipers.

That same day, when it was time to board buses for Houston, soldiers had trouble controlling the crowd. People at the back of the mob crushed the people in front against barricades soldiers put up to control the flow. Many people continued to yell obscenities whenever a patrol went by. Some were afraid of losing their place in line and defecated where they stood. The Army Times reported that Sgt. 1st Class Ron Dixon of the Oklahoma National Guard, who had recently come home from Afghanistan, said he was struck by the fact Afghanis wanted to help themselves, but that the people of New Orleans only wanted others to help them.

By the evening of Sept. 3, the Superdome was finally evacuated, but the state-of-the-art stadium was a reeking cavern of filth, human waste, and an unknown number of corpses. It, too, had been looted of everything not bolted down. Janice Singleton was working at the stadium when the storm hit. She said she was robbed of everything, even her shoes. As for the building: “They tore that dome apart,” she said sadly. “They tore it down. They taking everything out of there they can take.”

Only afterwards did the public learn there were 50 police officers assigned to the Superdome, but they appear to have been completely ineffectual. Toni Blanco, a 24-year veteran, said police could not arrest anyone because there was no place to hold suspects, and they were afraid to use their guns for fear of the crowd. “You felt helpless in the sense there was absolutely nothing we could do for the city,” she said. What did she do at night, when conditions were worst? She and another officer, Alecia Wright, would slip out to a patrol car and have a good cry. “Many times we laid in the car and tears just rolled,” said Miss Blanco. Some officers simply abandoned their posts and fled the Superdome.

Conditions were even worse at the Convention Center. Although on high ground not far from the stadium, it had not been designated as a shelter. It was, however, beyond reach of the high water, and soon some 20,000 people were huddled in its cavernous halls. There were no supplies or staff, and for several days neither FEMA nor the National Guard seems to have known anyone was there.

Armed gangs took control, and occasional gunshots caused panic. There was no power, and at night the center was plunged into complete darkness. Degeneracy struck almost immediately, with rapes, robbery, and murder. Terrible shrieking tore through the night, but no one could see, or dared to move. When Police Chief Eddie Compass heard what was happening, he sent a squad of 88 officers to investigate. They were overwhelmed by superior forces and retreated, leaving thousands to the mercy of criminals.

It was not until Sept. 2 — four days after the hurricane — that a force of 1,000 National Guardsmen finally took over from the armed gangs. “Had we gone in with a lesser force we may have been challenged, [and] innocents may have been caught in a fight,” explained Gen. Blum.

Sitting with her daughter and other relatives, Trolkyn Joseph, 37, told a reporter that men had wandered the center at night raping and murdering children. She said she found a dead 14-year old girl at 5 a.m. on Friday morning, four hours after the girl went missing. “She was raped for four hours until she was dead,” Miss Joseph said through tears. “Another child, a seven-year old boy, was found raped and murdered in the kitchen freezer last night.”

Africa Brumfield, 32, explained that women were in particular fear: “There is rapes going on here. Women cannot go to the bathroom without men. They are raping them and slitting their throats.” Donald Anderson, 43, was at the convention center with his wife, who was six months pregnant: “We circled the chairs like wagons because at night there are stampedes,” he said. “We had to survive.”

The very few whites in the crowd were terrified. Eighty-year-old Selma Valenti, who was with her husband, said blacks threatened to kill them on Thursday, Sept. 1. “They hated us. Four young black men told us the buses were going to come last night and pick up the elderly so they were going to kill us,” she said, sobbing. Presumably, the blacks wanted to take their places on the buses.

The center was not entirely without a form of rough justice. A National Guardsman reported that a man who had raped and killed a young girl in the bathroom was caught by the crowd — which beat him to death.

At one time there were as many as seven or eight corpses in front of the center, some of them with blood streaming from bullet wounds. Inside, there was an emergency morgue, but a National Guardsman refused to let a Reuters photographer take pictures. “We’re not letting anyone in there anymore,” he said. “If you want to take pictures of dead bodies, go to Iraq.” By Saturday, Sept. 3, the center was mostly cleared of the living. Refugees pulled shirts over their noses trying to block out the smell as they walked past rotting bodies.

Later it would be learned there were 30 to 40 bodies piled into the convention center’s freezer, almost all of them murder victims. Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks showed a reporter the charnel house: “I ain’t got the stomach for it, even after what I saw in Iraq. In Iraq, it’s one-on-one. It’s war. It’s fair. Here, it’s just crazy. It’s anarchy. . . . And this is America. This is just 300 miles south of where I live.”

For the city as a whole, not even 50,000 soldiers and federal rescue workers could bring calm. On Sunday, Sept. 4, contractors working for the US Army Corps of Engineers came under fire. Their police escort returned fire and killed four attackers.

On Monday, Sept, 5, a week after the hurricane and after virtually everyone who wanted to get out was gone, there was still widespread banditry. “We’re having some pretty intense gun battles breaking out around the city,” said Capt. Jeff Winn of the New Orleans SWAT team. “Armed gangs of from eight to 15 young men are riding around in pickup trucks, looting and raping.”

Brian McKay was one of 300 Arkansas guardsmen just back from Iraq. He was in full battle gear, including body armor, putting down insurgents. “It’s like Baghdad on a bad day,” he said. Another Arkansan veteran under fire agreed: “It’s just so much like Iraq, it’s not funny, except for all the water, and they speak English.”

Since the old jail was flooded, police set up a holding pen at the Greyhound bus terminal. State Attorney General Charles Foti said there were plans for a temporary court system, but no one knew how they were going to assemble juries or call witnesses. The grim business began of combing the drowning city for corpses and the remaining survivors.

Reactions

The world reacted with astonishment to sights it never expected to see in America. “Anarchy in the USA,” read the headline in Britain’s best-selling newspaper, The Sun. “Apocalypse Now,” said Handelsblatt in Germany. Mario de Carvalho, a veteran Portuguese cameraman, who covers the world’s trouble spots, said he saw the bodies of babies and old people along the highways leading out of New Orleans. “It’s a chaotic situation. It’s terrible. It’s a situation we generally see in other countries, in the Third World,” he said.

Some Third-Worlders would have been insulted. “I am absolutely disgusted,” said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, of the looters. The Sri Lanka native added: “After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering. Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world’s population is.”

In the United States, the stark contrast between endless scenes of appalling behavior by blacks and rescue personnel who were almost all white was greeted with the standard foolishness. Some people accused the “biased” media of suppressing footage of rampaging whites and heroic black helicopter pilots.

Many blacks made excuses for looters. “Desperate people do desperate things,” said US Rep. Diane Watson of California. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. from Illinois, said we must not judge harshly: “Who are we to say what law and order should be in this unspeakable environment?” Rep. Melvin Watt, North Carolina Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, was perhaps the greatest ass of all: “Whatever is being taken could not be used by anyone else anyway,” he said.

Many blacks took it for granted that federal relief was slow because the victims were black. Rep. Elijah Cummings said “poverty, age and skin color” determined who lived and who died. Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau, blasted “disparate treatment” of Katrina victims. “Many black people feel that their race, their property conditions and their voting patterns have been a factor in the response,” explained Jesse Jackson, Sr. He said the rubbish outside the Convention Center made the place look “like the hull of a slave ship.” Black activist and reparations-booster Randall Robinson said the relief effort was the “defining watershed moment in America’s racial history.” He said he had “finally come to see my country for what it really is. A monstrous fraud.”

Democratic Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick of Michigan said she was “ashamed of America and . . . of our government.” The mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin — the man who gave city workers a vacation when the feds arrived — shouted and wept on local radio, demanding of federal officials: “Get off your asses, and let’s do something.” There was an undercurrent of fury at a meeting of black leaders in Detroit. One audience member wanted to know whether the slow federal response was “black genocide.” Another shouted, “African Americans built this nation. Descendants of slaves are being allowed to die.”

One black man, observing the chaos from abroad, took a different view. Leighton Levy wrote in the Sept. 2 Jamaica Star: “I am beginning to believe that black people, no matter where in the world they are, are cursed with a genetic predisposition to steal, murder, and create mayhem.” He wanted to know why there was no footage of white looters: “Is it that the media are not showing pictures of them looting and robbing? Or is it that they are too busy trying to stay alive, waiting to be rescued, and hiding from the blacks?”

Most blacks and many whites fell into the usual assumptions about omnipotent white government and helpless Negroes. If black people were suffering it was because whites had not done enough for them. It did not occur to them that it was the responsibility of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana — not the federal government — to prepare for hurricanes. Before the storm, Mayor Nagin issued a mandatory evacuation only under pressure from the Bush administration. The mayor then did nothing to enforce the order, leaving hundreds of city buses and school buses to drown, rather than use them to offer transportation to people without cars.

Something of the mood of black New Orleans was caught by Fox News film crews as late as Sunday, Sept. 4. White volunteers were trying to persuade a black woman and her small children to leave her flooded house. “You’ve got to get out,” they explained. “The water isn’t going away.” A black man at the top of a multi-story building told a helicopter crew he didn’t need to leave. All he needed was some supplies.

These people could not understand something that was obvious to the whole world: New Orleans had no electricity, no plumbing, no transport, and no food. Blacks refused to leave their flooded homes, even though to stay meant near-certain death.

Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff noted how crazy it was to stay in the wreckage. “That is not a reasonable alternative,” he said. “We are not going to be able to have people sitting in houses in the city of New Orleans for weeks and months while we de-water and clean this city.”

FEMA reported that it had pulled three Carnival Cruise Lines ships from commercial duty to shelter the blacks of New Orleans. Maybe the chance of berth on the Ecstasy, the Sensation or the Holiday would be enough to drag them out of the muck.

Lessons

Ninety-nine percent of the white people left New Orleans when the evacuation order went out. Some 80,000 blacks could not or would not leave. Whites did not “leave them behind,” as the editorial writers keep telling us. No one could have gotten some of them to leave — a number of men cheerfully admitted they stayed in town to loot — but if it was anyone’s job to give them the option, it was that of the black-run city government. Of the blacks who stayed, probably only a minority committed crimes, but they were enough to turn the city into a hell hole. Some did unspeakable things: loot hospitals, fire on rescue teams, destroy ambulances. No amount of excuse-making and finger-pointing can paper over degeneracy like that. Black people — and only black people — did these things.

The Superdome and the Convention Center were certainly unpleasant places to spend three or four days, but 50,000 whites would have behaved completely differently. They would have established rules, organized supplies, cared for the sick and dying. They would have organized games for children. The papers would be full of stories of selflessness and community spirit.

Natural disasters usually bring out the best in people, who help neighbors and strangers alike. For blacks — at least the lower-class blacks of New Orleans — disaster was an excuse to loot, rob, rape and kill.

Our rulers and media executives will try to turn the story of Hurricane Katrina into yet another morality tale of downtrodden blacks and heartless whites, but pandering of this kind fools fewer and fewer people.

Many whites will realize — some for the first time — that we have Africa in our midst, that utterly alien Africa of road-side corpses, cruelty, and anarchy that they thought could never wash up on these shores.

To be sure, the story of Hurricane Katrina does have a moral for anyone not deliberately blind. The races are different. Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western Civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.

And in a crisis, Western Civilization disappears overnight.

Conclusion

America is fragile.

What happens when an EMP wipes out all communication, vehicular traffic, internet, and batteries? Who will come out of the balkanized enclaves? And what will they do?

The writing has been on the wall for some time, and now hate has been institutionalized, and the social structure is gone. It is in tatters. America is a wreck, and the ruling oligarchy really isn’t aware at the actual fragility of America.

If they were (aware) they would be conducting emergency domestic rebuilding, and hiring.

They would NOT be constructing trillion-dollar spending campaigns on the military “to counter” anyone.

And they most certainly wouldn’t be giving away trillion-dollars to any other nations for a counter program for the BRI.

Instead, they would be spending money and time dealing with the festering problems that exists right now. That means all sorts of restructuring of local and state and federal governments, wholesale readjustments of federal agencies, and many, many rebuilding programs at the LOCAL LEVEL. Not throwing away money at the FEDERAL LEVEL.

But they are not.

Instead we see the nation gearing up for a major war with either China or Russia. And trust me, it will be against both simultaneously.

What will happen after the missiles fly is anyone’s guess. But I am leaning strongly on a short-war, with both Russia and China being victorious. And America absolutely, completely and utterly, devastated; broken and destroyed in every single conceivable way.

Are you all ready for a devastated America?

Do you have any idea what that means? Do you have any idea what it will be like for the people inside of America? A balkanized racist America?

Guess.

Now, a word about whether this might come about…

I wrote this back over a year ago. And the events of the last few months put everything in a stunning new light…

Deagel August 2020 Forecast For America has the population dropping a full 70% by 2025

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Articles & Links

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• You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
• You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
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A lot of interesting articles out lately concerning Geo-Politics. Most of which are unavailable on Google or in the states. As they are “shadow banned”. I want to chat about some of the stuff that’s “out there”. And in this post I am going to throw a lot of the banned stuff out for you all to absorb.

But first, let me take a sip of tea.

You know, I have come to enjoy Earl Grey Tea. It’s got this lovely aroma, a nice soothing feel, and is wholly enjoyable to drink. But I do not drink it every day. Sometimes I drink roasted Oolong tea. And I have become a fan of green tea. It’s healthier for you, don’t you know.

With the Earl Grey Tea, I like to drink it UK / Australian style. Nicely seeped in a pot, poured into a a nice cup sitting on a saucer, and I add some sugar and milk. Though it’s not all that proper. I do enjoy it that way.

This is how a “real” (an authentic) British person (man, or woman, or “thing”) makes a cup of tea.

How to Make a “Proper” Cup of Tea (British Tea, that is)

Tea is an institution in the UK. Its fibers are woven into the British culture in such a way that it is difficult to describe to a “non-Brit.” I came across this video a while ago and was so awed by the impact a beverage can have on a country.

FYI to Americans, Eastenders is a popular soap-opera type show in the UK. When the show finishes, most viewers turn the kettle on for a cup of tea resulting in a huge surge for electricity! Who’d figure?

I put “proper” in quotation marks because this is my version of how to make a proper cup of tea. It’s not the “proper-proper” tea made with loose leaf tea, of course. That’s more for a leisurely afternoon tea, but this is an everyday process with tea bags which is less time consuming.

In the UK they say to put one teabag per person and “one for the pot.” However, in my opinion that’s too strong for most people in the US and Canada who are used to a weaker tea.

If you are using a British brand of tea, which is already much stronger and has a lot more flavor than most US tea brands, you might just want to use a teabag per person.

Three teabags for a 32 ounce pot, not completely filled to the rim (about 4 cups of tea) is perfect for a fine British family, but you can just adjust accordingly.

First of all, a proper-proper cup of tea is made with loose leaf tea, but most of us don’t have time for that on a daily basis, two or three times a day.

So this is mostly aimed at US households who are used to a Lipton teabag in hot water in a mug. This will be a big change in flavor for those of you.

1.Boil the water.

First, bring water to a boil, but do not let it keep boiling. Remove it as soon as it comes to a boil. This is critical. This is important.

Hot water will not do.

We want the tea leaves to infuse the flavor of the tea into the water, and tepid or hot water will not do this nearly as well as boiling water. I use an electric kettle because we use it all the time.

You will also need a good teapot, preferably one made in the UK (they know their tea there).

2.Warm the teapot for the perfect cup of tea.

So, when the kettle is almost boiling, put some water in the pot, just to warm up the teapot. Return the kettle to its base (or stovetop) to make it come to a full boil. Swirl the hot water around the teapot and then drain it out. Make sure to have your teabags ready.

3.Add the teabags and water to the pot.

When the water just comes to a boil, put the teabags in the teapot and immediately pour the water into the pot.

You do not place them in the cup.

You place the teabags in the kettle. That is it’s purpose.

4.Use a tea cosy (if you have one).

Next, if you have a tea cosy, cover the pot. If not, use a heavy tea towel or something to keep the pot warm. You’ll discover that this also makes a big difference in the outcome of the flavor of the tea.

5.Steep the tea.

Let the tea steep for about 3 to 5 minutes; the longer you leave it, the stronger it will be. (Three minutes in a tea pot is pretty weak.)

6.Pour the tea and add the milk (and sugar, if desired).

Now it’s time to pour the perfectly steeped tea.

If you’re going to add sugar, add it before the milk so that it has a chance to start melting before adding the cold milk. Regarding the whole “milk, or tea first” debate, it used to be that milk went in first to protect the china from cracking, so that’s no longer a reason.

I think it’s a personal preference. I like to add the milk after so I can better control the ratio of milk to tea, and you may think I’m crazy, but I say it tastes better, too. I also prefer whole milk. 2% milk is passable, but don’t offer me 1% or even talk to me about skim milk. Although you should NEVER add cream to a cup of tea, the natural cream that’s in whole milk adds a lot to the flavor of a proper cup of tea.

Now enjoy with a crumpet or a biscuit.

Now…

With a cup of tea in one hand, and a fine hot buttered crumpet nearby. Let’s adjust our monocle to look at the editorial sections of the paper. Shall we?

Ah. A fine Rugby match. It’s all Crickets, don’t you know.

Oh, here’s something from the colonies…

It seems that President Biden is trying to incentivize Russia to stop dealing with China. It’s what he has been doing with the G7 folk in Europe. But, you know, Russia is “not biting”.

Russia and China

MOSCOW (Xinhua): Russian President Vladimir Putin has denounced actions aimed at driving a wedge between Moscow and Beijing, stressing that China is a strategic partner, not a threat.

"We can see attempts to destroy the relationship between Russia and China. We can see that those attempts are being made in practical policies,"

Putin said in an interview with US television network NBC published on Monday (June 14).

"We are pleased with the unprecedentedly high level of our relationship as it has evolved over the last few decades. We cherish it just like our Chinese friends do, which we can see,"

He said.

Putin praised…

"a high level of trust and cooperation in all areas"

…between the two countries, from politics and economy to technology and military.

"We do not believe that China is a threat to us. China is a friendly nation. It has not declared us an enemy as the United States has done,"

He said.

A huge and powerful country, China has been developing with its great economy and a tremendous volume of foreign trade,

He added.

"We have been working and will continue to work with China, which applies to all kinds of programs, including exploring deep space,"

The Russian leader concluded.

Meanwhile, exactly what’s up with the Western G7 nations?

Popular WhatsApp forwarded message:

*Netherlands for 350 years and Japan for 3.5 years*.

*Britain*.

*France 1857-1940 & 1946-1954, Japan 1940-1945 and USA (in Southern Vietnam) 1955-1975*.

*Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Italy*.

*Britain, US, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, Italy & Austria-Hungary*.

*France & Britain*.

*Britain* .

 *United Kingdom/Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan & USA*.

 *Ego or fear of retribution* ?

America today is so many ways from being Right, that it’s easy to pick it’s imperfections. Here’s another article by a Pentagon worker who is alarmed at what is going on inside of the Washington DC beltway for war (with either or Russia and / or China)…

America trying to get make the Chinese look evil

Merriam Webster dictionary defines the word "othering" as an act wherein a race or culture is made to appear as "a large, uniform mass, rather than a diverse group of individuals… treating people from another group as less human than one's own group." 

Historically, "othering" has served as a conditioning mechanism to dehumanize US adversaries, preparing normally empathetic men and women to act with less discrimination and greater brutality in war.

During WWII, US othering of the Japanese involved weaponizing disinformation and propagating racist stereotypes. It was considered as effective at setting the necessary psychological conditions for the controversial internment of Japanese Americans, firebombing of Tokyo, and dropping of atomic bombs on Japanese cities merely to deter the Soviet Union. Conceivably, left unmodified, a soldier's empathy for non-combatant human beings otherwise could have placed those ruthless American operations and their objectives at risk.

Othering of the Chinese people is evident in recent US news media in the form of a mix of unverified rumors, disinformation, and selective exclusion of contradictory facts. It has been reported that China-averse special interests have even paid US journalists to publish stories biased against China's policies, to include encouraging a US-China confrontation. Meanwhile, the island of Taiwan's secession champions in the US Congress have nurtured the absurd public perception that the US-emulating people aboard the island of Taiwan are "non-Chinese" in ethnic identity.

The apparent sophistication and coordination of Chinese othering are indications that some in the US are working to desensitize Americans to the certain horrors of a war with China over Taiwan. Its effects are already being witnessed in American society. Despite a presidential-level denouncement, racially motivated assaults on Chinese and Asians generally are sharply increasing. The dehumanization of our future foe is in full swing to the delight of China-averse special interests.

Some argue that a US war with China over Taiwan would be a just war, claiming the "non-Chinese" island citizenry deserves our protection, not just ideological support. Others will go further and assert that the US nuclear umbrella needs to be extended to encompass the island. They try to make the desperate case that the island of Taiwan is the last bastion of American values in Southeast Asia, and the final barricade that contains China.

The nuclear weapons theme deserves a closer look. Senior US military leaders at different times in the 20th century glibly suggested the employment of nuclear weapons to regain initiative in conventional conflicts with non-nuclear Asian nations. In addition to the island of Taiwan, these included conflicts in and with Vietnam, Korea, and China. Similarly, the employment of firebombing and nuclear weapons against a densely populated Japan was rationalized without significant opposition.

This was not so in the European theater. The firebombings of Dresden, Hamburg and elsewhere were emotionally contested even at the time of their planning, although the fanaticism and atrocious behavior of Imperial Japan was on a par with that of Nazi Germany. In fact, Winston Churchill went so far as to write: the destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing. Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima did not benefit from such a distinguished Western advocate, and evidently neither does China.

Today hawkish members of Congress, most of whom have not served their country in uniform, casually resurrect such options as it pertains to supporting the island of Taiwan's split from China. It is easy for them to talk tough on the matter as most don't know the sacrifices of Service, and perhaps because of lacking ethnic identification with Chinese and other Asian races and cultures. This thoughtless devaluation of Asian casualties to mere nuclear attrition statistics results from the same sort of American othering seen in the 20th century.

In a war, the small island of Taiwan would erupt into a battleground with an intensity unknown since the world wars. All parties have known that the island's citizenry would be devastated far beyond the value of attempting to secede from China. Since this is known by the US Congress in advance, it illuminates the reality that the Chinese aboard the island of Taiwan are expendable. The issue of the island province is not and never was about protecting its people. Instead, it is all about the US striving to maintain its hegemonic reach during a period of decline in global influence.

This difference in the US perspectives on Asian and European lives is nothing new to any overseas or indigenous Asian citizen. To contort the present American devaluation and othering into a dubious justification for violating China's internal affairs and sovereignty is futile and transparent. It also portends that a fight over the island of Taiwan will rapidly devolve into a primitive, brutal, unrestricted war that has every appearance of, and is at its core an imperial US expedition.

As an American, my priority is US national interest. Attempting to support the renegade island of Taiwan's secession is directly contrary to the US national interest as we know in advance we will lose. Even in defeat many politicians, conservative ideologues, financially incentivized journalists, and special interests such as the US defense industry would benefit, just as a similar cabal did after Vietnam. But Taiwan secession is a transparently shallow cause with no path to victory. In fact, historical precedent shows that the US will lose primarily because the American public will see through the fraudulent deadly farce, but only after the unspeakable tragedy unfolds.

In the end, China' Province of Taiwan will always mean more to the physically proximate, ethnically identical, and nationalistically fueled China of over 1.4 billion, than it will to the distant, over-extended, and above all falsely incentivized US of 350 million. The heaviest burden of the tragedy of war will fall on the young, patriotic men and women who volunteered to serve in the US military in the faith that an assigned cause is legitimate and worthy of their sacrifice. Unfortunately, a war between the US and China over the island of Taiwan would be a complete betrayal of their good faith.

The author is a retired Marine Corps infantry officer who now serves as a US civil servant in the Pentagon. Opinions are of the author and do not represent the US government obviously.

So when a Pentagon insider is seeing things starting to turn in one direction and is willing to risk his life and his career over it, maybe we all should shit up and take notice.

This all makes me hungry because it reminds me of Po-Boy sandwiches

Well it does.

You see, this near religious fervor towards war reminds me of the “Bible thumping” ministers of the deep, deep American South. Like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. As much as I love Louisiana, and I do love it in so many, many ways, the “Bible Thumpers” are just plain obnoxious.

They really are.

Louisiana and Mississippi are just beautiful, and I consider my days in Hattiesburgh and Pervis to be very special ones.

Anyways…

This reminds me of Louisiana because of the assholes pushing for war. They are of the same type; a belief that they have been issued by GOD to be the “cleansers of the world” to remove all impurities that does not embrace the righteous nature of “democracy’!

Now getting to my point.

They remind me of food.

Why?

I do not know.

Girls remind me of food too. But I know why. I always picture myself eating with them and chatting with them, and telling stories, and drinking wine over delicious food. So it’s really understandable that I would associate women with food.

But sicko egomaniacs?

Let me continue….

…and try to explain. First, let’s discuss what a “Po’boy” is…

A Po-Boy is a traditional sandwich from Louisiana. It almost always consists of meat, which is usually roast beef or fried seafood, often shrimp, crawfish, fish, oysters or crab. The meat is served on New Orleans French bread, known for its crisp crust and fluffy center.

When I read about how America is going to “save the Taiwanese” for “democracy” and “freedom” I am reminded of the Southern Baptist minister in the deep South of Louisiana. The local folk were all pretty darn decent, and I served some time with them in prison, but the local government was so very corrupt, and the Baptist Ministers were the worst kind of “fire and brimstone” evangelicals.

You know like Tom Cotton is. Yeah, I know he’s from Arkansas. But it’s not that far away from Louisiana. Maybe one or two inches.

Tom Cotton.

What a fella.

He’s (you know) one of the jack-asses pushing for World War III.

I associate him with his environment. As we should all associate people so that we can best understand them, their motivations, and why they do the crazy things that they do.

So it makes me think of what it was like, and how can I omit the wonderful Po’boy sandwiches and fine Cajun Cooking?

Well…

There are no easy answers.

Corrupt people in America push to become leaders and live in the enclave of the psychopaths; Washington DC. And he is one of them.

Personally, I cannot imagine him eating delicious food.

Instead, I picture him (somehow) eating food like this…

Not bad.

Just saying.

The USA will lose in a war concerning Taiwan

Here’s a pretty decent article by another ex-military working inside the Pentagon who is, justifiably horrified at all the talk about war, war, war! He wrote this and subsequently had his secret clearances revoked. He was then fired.

It would seem to some that a US war with China over the island of Taiwan appears imminent.

Considering the congestion of hostile forces in, above, and below the Taiwan Straits and South China Sea, conflict could explode by accident or design. Once blood is drawn, the US will have few options. If the US elects to fight China over the island of Taiwan, then it will lose.

Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) independence hubris is fueled by US cabinet-level China hawks and Congress' bipartisan, bicameral Taiwan Caucus. The DPP has rejected political reunification in one China and dismissed the "one country, two systems" model under which both Taiwan and Hong Kong have gotten rich. Encouraged by US trivialization of the three joint communiqués, the DPP parades a sense of entitlement, taking for granted an umbrella of protection with full knowledge of the dire consequences for the US

The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) may not have been intended to give birth to Taiwan's renegade secessionists, but it has done exactly that.

The DPP's champions in the US Congress dismiss omens of fanatical China grit on the topic of Taiwan. China-bashing and Taiwan-coveting rhetoric forms an echo chamber reminiscent of the groupthink-led American Friends of Vietnam (AFV) lobby that pressured the US to commit to the Vietnam War killing 60,000 American patriots before the US disgracefully abandoned its ally.

But the Chinese are different. 

China's history of the whole-of-society commitment to core national security priorities is legendary. The rebellions and unrests in the 19th century cost millions of Chinese lives. Twentieth century Chinese civil war losses ranged between 5 and 8 million, and 360,000 Chinese died in Korea, while routing and humiliating US and UN forces. In each case, the dynasties emerged stronger.

The US Congress' interests in Taiwan are deeply conflicted, better said corrupt. 

The reciprocal relationship between defense lobbyists, industry contributions, and a Caucus Member's reelectability is well documented. The bipartisan support for increasing arms sales to Taiwan and even larger defense expenditures on the US Indo-Pacific Command are logical and transparent as all parties profit from the tension and war.

Many Americans assume China's citizenry longs for a liberal democracy like that on the island of Taiwan, and that war will trigger popular revolt. 

But the Taiwan question is not an ideological dispute. 

Rather it is a raw and painful open wound in China's civilizational identity. Today, US othering of Chinese only fuels a fierce nationalism in its 1.4 billion citizens. China has a traditional self-narrative wherein the preservation of face and enforcement of sovereignty are inseparable.

All the while the balance of power has shifted fundamentally. The US would be wise to regard China as a peer superpower, if only due to her casualty-tolerance - China's decisive advantage in any fight with the US. China also shares a binding mutual defense treaty with North Korea, and the depths of its friendship and security bonds with Russia should never be underestimated.

The US can think whatever it wants about China's ideology, culture, Xinjiang and Hong Kong policies, and sovereign claims to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and surrounding seas. But, whether the US likes it or not, those are ultimately China's internal affairs.

As for DPP claims of the Province of Taiwan's non-Chinese identity, they are historical fiction. 

Fate made them Chinese just as fate made us Americans. We also know that the free will choice to carve out a territory and people from an existing nation incurs a steep price, one the Confederacy paid not long ago.

The US has never paid an existential price for violating another nation's sovereignty, leading to our smug sense of military invincibility. 

However, with Taiwan being a core Chinese priority, that would be a fatal miscalculation. 

Still, the US counts on regional allies to share the pain. Yet some will have blood debts to pay if they engage in China's civil war. For example, India was bloodied badly in the 1960s for testing China's territorial resolve. Japan's humiliating 50-year occupation of Taiwan and the Rape of Nanjing also remain fresh, unforgettable wounds for China. The US allies will definitely think twice before militarily intervening in China's unresolved civil war and internal affairs.

The US could advise Taiwan's secessionists to peaceably accept "one country, two systems" and cease its "independence" ambitions. If they don't stop their rhetoric, the US president could rescind the TRA, as baiting China to force reunification is of the DPP's own choosing. If Congress obstructs TRA recension, the US president could order all national security agencies to stand down in cross-Straits conflicts, keeping our powder dry for actual existential threats in the future.

In the end, the prosperous Taiwan people will make every effort to wag the American dog. But Taiwan's fate poses no existential threat to the US, and the US should not fall into the trap of paying for their hubris with American blood. However, in view of the violent political polarization of the US at home, an ill-advised foreign war with no path to victory would only serve to accelerate America's decline.

But he’s right. Don’t you know.

But the United States is absolutely out-of-control right now and no one wants to hear that “the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes”.

The story “the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes”

Is everyone, or anyone, aware of this children’s story written by Hans Christian Anderson. You know the one. It was first published in April of 1873?

Well, then, here is a short summary.

The story is about a vain emperor whose favorite thing was buying and wearing the latest style of clothes. The story points out how the emperor cared nothing about reviewing his troops, going to the theater or going for carriage rides (Unless the rides were to show off his newest clothes). “He had a different coat for every hour of the day,” the story continues. When the emperor was late for a meeting or other event the excuse was usually, “The emperor is in his dressing room.”

The kingdom is described as a festive place with many visitors.

The story continues that on one day two “swindlers” came to the emperor’s town. The swindlers claimed to be weavers and bragged to anyone who would listen how they, “Could weave the most magnificent of clothes.” The swindler’s story continued that, “Not only were the colors uncommonly fine, but clothes made of this cloth had a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office, or who was unusually stupid.”

Word of the “weavers” reached the emperor and he thought this was great, he felt it would be the ideal product for him so he could determine who was not worthy of their position!

“He paid a large sum of money to the swindlers to start at once.” “They set up two looms and pretended to weave, though there was nothing on the looms. All the finest silk and purest old thread which they demanded went into their travel bags, while they worked the empty looms well into the night.”

The emperor was anxious to check on the progress and, while he was a very confident person, he was concerned that he might not see the material and asked a trusted old minister to check on the progress.

The swindlers, pretending to be weaving the material, greeted the minister when he arrived and said, “Don’t hesitate a moment to tell us what you think.” The minister was embarrassed and did not want anyone to suspect he was not worthy of his post, or stupid. “It’s beautiful.” was his reply.

The swindlers thanked him and then recited a list of all the colors and explained the intricacies of the weave. The minister listened intently as he feared everyone else would see the clothes. The swindlers then asked the emperor for more money, silk and thread.

The Emperor asked another trusted advisor to check on the progress. That advisor looked at the empty looms and said to himself, “Well I know that I am not stupid, so I must be unfit for my position. I can’t let anyone know.” He reported that the material was coming along splendidly.

When the emperor then viewed his new clothes, with all of his noblemen present, the swindlers pretended to hold up the finished product. The emperor did not see anything, but pretended he did because all of the noblemen said they saw it, and he did not want them to think that he was not fit for his position. The noblemen suggested the emperor wear his new clothes to the procession later that day. All in attendance agreed, afraid to be the only one to admit they could not see the clothes.

The swindlers then “dressed” the emperor in his new outfit and the entourage went off to the procession.

At the procession the townspeople, all aware of the special quality of the material, pretended the emperor was dressed magnificently until a child said, “He has no clothes!” The crowd started to repeat what had been said and finally cried out as one, “He has no clothes on.”

The story ends saying, “The emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, ‘This procession has to go on.’ So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.”

That’s America today

And isn’t it though?

It’s pretty bat-shit crazy. Like the UK is.

When I was growing up as a boy, we had this magazine called “MAD Magazine” that we all used to read. We would read it cover to cover. It was filled with just off-the-wall interpretations of life, and we all loved it.

Today, it seems, America is just one big old MAD Magazine.

I'm sure everyone remembers their first issue of Mad Magazine. It was odd, uproariously funny, and immature enough for everyone. My first issue was when I was about twelves, when my mom bought me an issue to read at the orthopedic surgeon's office (I had broken my arm about a week prior). However, I'm no kid anymore (or so the judge tells me). I'm a college student, looking to become a professional teacher, and I'm a respected reviewer for this website. How can I like something as immature as Mad?

Simply put, Mad is the most dead-on entertainment magazine available. Through a combination of peurile humor, self-deprication, excellent art, and witty writing, Mad has seperated itself from the pack of low-end satire mags (like Cracked) and made itself a true piece of American culture. Stop groaning out there.

First, Mad brings itself to attention primarily for its spoofs of popular movies and television shows. I think this results in the "Weird Al" syndrome - you pay more attention to the obvious mockeries than the subtle ones. As time has gone on, Mad's style has cleaned up considerably - which means that now, you can catch marginal jokes even better than before, and the magazine fits more in. While occasionally lewd, Mad also recognizes that sometimes, humor is best left suggested, and many jokes are subtle innuendos, much beyond what people would initially give the mag credit for.

Mad's jokes work so well because they first did what Mystery Science Theater 3000 became famous for - finding what everyone makes fun of about in a given piece of entertainment and finding the perfect gag to make about it. For a classic example, in their parody of "Big Daddy," "Big Bladder," they have someone go up to the kid and complain about his wooden delivery. Who would be such an expert on bad childhood acting? The block of wood that played Anakin in "Phantom Menace." 

I couldn't have come up with a better gag myself, and generally, Mad gives this kind of performance consistently. While it does occasionally foul up - I found some of their Pokemon parodies lacking the punch of other shots - Mad creates gags much better than, say, your average night of NBC's "Must See TV."

However, Mad also has a rabid following because of their regular gags that appear often. Of course, despite the passing of its creator, "Spy vs. Spy" is going on as strong as ever, with a new airbrushed style that doesn't detract from "the famous duo of double-cross and deceit." Dave Berg still puts in regular duty with his clever "The Lighter Side Of..." which has modern lampoonings of everyday situations. Newer additions to this mix are sure to become classics - "Jenkins and Melvin," an answer to Highlight's "Goofus and Gallant," brings me to tears laughing every time. While Jenkins is even more of a proper gentleman than Gallant, Melvin is sure to provide a situation even more ridiculous than Goofus ever could. Almost frighteningly educational.

However, nothing showcases Mad's continued tradition of excellence like one new feature and one classic. Al Jaffee is still around, and he still makes a new, highly entertaining "Mad Fold-In" for the back cover of every issue. There is sure to be an off-beat answer to the fold-in, and the art is rather cleverly done - I still wish I knew how Jaffee does it. On the opposite page from the fold-in is a new regular feature which has quickly become a favorite of mine - the Celebrity Odds of Death listing. When I first saw it, it listed the various odds of the Spice Girls dying in various ways - "Terminal Giggling" had a 1:1 chance, while "Choking on a chicken bone during a dinner celebrating their 5th year in the music business" had over a billion to one shot. I enjoy this feature so much, I start with it first whenever I pick up a new issue.

One thing about Mad, though, is that the humor is aimed for all levels - I wonder if the writers had a steady diet of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" when they were younger. 

While there are plenty of obvious jokes for all ages, there is plenty of subtle humor, especially political humor, in each issue. Looking back on older issues I have, I'm surprised at how many jokes I didn't get because I didn't know much about politics then. If Mad felt like trying a bit harder, they could probably make a sister magazine that concentrated on politics. Of course, that would just scare people afraid of the magazine multiplying.

Mad isn't totally perfect. There are still occasional rough spots in the art, and sometimes, a whole section will just lack laughs, such as the first parody of Pokemon that Mad put together. Also, a new feature, "Monroe," usually lacks the punch and humor of the other segments - you can generally skip it. Also, Mad sometimes skimps over parts you wish were mocked, due to the limited amount of space the magazine has. I sometimes wish the magazine would expand and maybe carry a few ads (from Archie McPhee and other such companies) to pack in more sufficiently wickedly barbed jokes.

But in all honesty, this doesn't detract from the magazine as a whole. It consistently gives you more laughs than anything since Monty Python. Moreover, unlike most topical humor, it ages like wine, getting better with the passing years. And with the new humorous monthly features, the magazine is insuring that it will have a healthy continued existence. From 61 Man Squamish to Superduperman, from Spy vs. Spy to the Fold-In, Mad has helped define itself as a prominent piece of our culture. Find out why - while America may be going somewhere in a handbasket, Mad is here to save our sanity.

-MAGSConnect

I like that. “…while America may be going somewhere in a handbasket, Mad is here to save our sanity.”

But is America really going bat-shit crazy? Does it really resemble the movie “Idiocracity”?

“Idiocracy” Was a Film — Now it’s 2021 America

A well-informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny,” noted Thomas Jefferson. It follows from this that if you want to visit tyranny upon a people, you can start by dumbing them down.

Ergo, 21st-century America.

So laments commentator Andrea Widburg. Writing Monday in a piece titled “There is no bottom to the ignorance of supposedly educated Americans,” she reminds us that the American system, “going all the way back to the Founding Fathers,” was predicated on having an educated population. “People weren’t expected to be scholars,” she pointed out, but the Founders did emphasize that their government couldn’t work without “a literate and moral population.”

“And that is what they got: most Americans were literate before public schooling,” Widburg continued. “Colonial Americans could also read at a very sophisticated level. The colonists would not have known what to make of the abysmally educated people this scary, funny video shows.”

They wouldn’t have known what to make of much that’s going on today. But the video in question, posted Sunday on YouTube, and showing supposedly average Americans trying to answer simple questions, and failing, is striking.

The question: “Who was the first person to land on the sun?” was taken seriously by the interviewees shown. Another highlight (lowlight) was when the questioner asked, “What country is Venice, Italy, located in?” The young woman queried responded, “Gosh, I’m gonna’ be a teacher, so I should know this.”

You can just see what is going on in the USA by the opinions of Americans on the outside looking in. Here's an article written by a Washington DC insider back on 2019 right before Coronavirus hit, and Donald Trump was getting ready for reelection...

One commenter under the video remarked “This can’t be legit” or “we are doomed.” But not only does it seem authentic, it simply reflects a multitude of “man on the street” interviews conducted over the years by comedian Jay Leno, shock jock Howard Stern, and others.

Knowing this, it’s not surprising to me that the referenced young woman would be a prospective teacher. It’s not just that studies have shown how little many educators know; it’s also that the people educating the educators — the pseudo-elites — are in their own way no better.

Shocked by her experiences at “prestigious” Columbia University, North Korean defector Yeonmi Park recently remarked about the state of America that even “North Korea is not this nuts.” Park was referring to the anti-Western sentiment and intense political correctness prevalent today, and she wasn’t joking.

Yet while our “wokeness” is called many things, nuts and dangerous among them, it’s also something else: profoundly stupid.

It can be said without exaggeration that America has become “Idiocracy.” This term is the title of a 2006 film portraying a dystopian, future United States in which IQs have dropped precipitously. People are obsessed with sex (sound familiar?), the president is a former professional wrestler and porn star who still dresses as befitting his former vocation (the one requiring clothes), vulgarity is everywhere, and entertainment has become über-simplistic and crude.

Of course, IQs are still high enough in the United States today, though some studies do show that they’ve been dropping for decades now. But the real issue is a moral corruption which infects everything else.

While real threats (e.g., China, the aforementioned moral crisis) are largely ignored, our pseudo-elites concern themselves with stupid things. Wholly contrary to science/evidence, they claim a boy can be a girl by willing it, we should be concerned about new “pronouns,” “diversity” is a strength, children should be vaccinated against a disease that doesn’t imperil them, a nation that has allowed 85 to 90 percent of its post-1967 immigrants to be from the Third World is “white supremacist,” and more.

It’s no wonder, either, that pseudo-elites want to “cancel” people who dispute the above. Their assertions are literally too stupid to be debated successfully; all they can do is make sure the debates never happen.

Then consider whom we now elevate to prominence. Curricula nationwide have been influenced by the 1619 Project, a deceit-filled, propagandistic portrayal of American history created by one Nikole Hannah-Jones. With red-dyed hair, Jones wouldn’t be out of place in Idiocracy, and she’s not out of place in ours: She was given a professorship by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Also fitting in is New York City-based psychoanalyst Dr. Donald Moss, who penned a recent paper in which he called “whiteness” a “malignant, parasitic like condition” that lacks a “permanent cure.”

His work was published in a medical journal.

And Jones and Moss are just two of a multitude of idiocrats.

The skids for their nonsensical thinking have long been well greased with philoso-babble. Years ago, the idiocrats labeled logic “white, male, and linear,” as if it’s a cultural oddity. Then there’s Critical Race Theory, whose proponents have claimed that “rugged individualism,” “a can-do attitude,” “hard work,” and “striving towards success” reflect “white male culture” and that planning for the future and punctuality are “white norms.” 

The idiocrats have also bemoaned the teaching of “facts” — even though facts, as little snippets of Truth, are how we piece together life’s jigsaw puzzle. But it’s no surprise pseudo-elites deemphasize facts: They want to replace them with fiction.

They’ve succeeded, too, which is why “the most recent generations of school graduates will bore you to tears talking about gender, racism, class victimization, America’s wrongdoing over the centuries, etc.,” writes Widburg. As Ronald Reagan put it, they “know so much that isn’t so.”

The solution to this, of course and as I’m wont to emphasize, is a return to virtue (objectively good moral habits). Virtue neutralizes moral corruption. In this regard, one entity doing good work, and helping to mold children’s minds properly, is the Freedom Project Academy, a fully accredited, online school offering classical education to students in kindergarten through high school.

But lacking this, it’s unsurprising that a senile man was elevated to the presidency. Joe Biden is the perfect leader and metaphor for a nation that’s forgotten its history, its virtue, its faith, and its reason for being.

OK. So America is senile.

But when did this all happen? Last year? What was going on and what turned America to the shit-storm that it is today?

Just When Did America Go Nuts?

“At first we thought they were just another snake cult, but now their towers are everywhere.” —Conan the Barbarian 1982

At the dawn of my congressional career, after some of us staffers endured a particularly egregious dose of idiocy, one of my colleagues was moved to compare our office to Saint Elizabeth’s, then still functioning as a mental hospital in DC (and now, fittingly, as headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security). “Not quite,” I responded. “Here the lunatics are in charge.”

That exchange, alas, has become a prophecy for the nation at large. It begins, as we are made aware by each daily tweet-storm, at the very top, but this insanity could not persist without broad and intense public support. It has become commonplace to characterize such supporters as haters, but while it would be dangerous to underestimate the role of sheer malice, Trumpism could only sustain itself with tens of millions of people who might not fit the profile of a hater, but are assuredly either borderline imbeciles or not-quite-certifiably insane. Examples there are in profusion; but rather than ringing the changes on every single winner of the Darwin Awards, let us examine three cases that have wider policy implications.

Item. Measles, an infectious disease that each year once killed several hundred people and caused about a thousand cases of encephalitis in America, was declared eradicated in the United States in 2000. But thanks to a kind of misbegotten Hitler-Stalin alliance between right-wing religious nuts and New Age-Hollywood Hills types, the disease has come roaring back.

What other topic could unite such a disparate gaggle of characters as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., trading on his father’s martyr credibility to whisk us back to pre-Enlightenment times, and Texas Republican State Rep. Jonathan Stickland, (apparently such an extreme Neanderthal that even Texas’ own hardline Freedom Caucus was too liberal for him) who has called vaccinations “sorcery?”

Mimicking the measles that their evangelism spreads, American anti-vaxxers are also some of the most industrious Internet pests known to science, even if their trolling is supplemented by bots from a certain foreign country.

Item. One of the “noble lies” undergirding modern society is the myth of the rational actor. So-called enlightened self-interest suffuses economics (although corporations know better, which explains their lavish expenditures on advertising); as well as game theory, which supposedly prevents nuclear war from breaking out; and politics.

Political scientists (and some psychologists) are fond of proving that people “vote their interests” by the simple, circular expedient of defining a subject’s true interests as whatever they opt for. It is time for a sweeping reevaluation of this canard.

In 2016, American farmers voted by a margin of between 3 and 4 to 1 in favor of Donald Trump over the Democrat. This happened in spite of the fact that he told them in clear and unmistakable terms that he would, if elected, ignite a trade war with their most lucrative export market. Further, he would cut off their supply of the low cost, often undocumented labor needed for fruit and vegetable picking as well as beef, pork, and poultry processing.

As a result, farm income is down, even though the income calculation includes the Market Facilitation Program, money extorted from the rest of us to reward Trump’s political base. Farm bankruptcies have soared. There is alleged evidence (not quantified by polling) that “farmers are losing their patience” amid mealy-mouthed equivocating from farm belt, GOP-elected officials over Trump’s latest tariff threats.

For now, though, it appears that farmers are sticking with Trump. If his electoral margin among them should even fall to 2½ to 1 in 2020, Democrats will think of it as a miraculous breakthrough. The bulk of farmers would likely prefer to go down in whatever fate decides will be America’s functional equivalent of the rubble of Berlin.

Item. For decades, American religious fundamentalists have ceaselessly worked to poison whole departments of knowledge – from geology to history to herpetology – with ignorance and disinformation. All of this in the service of a project to turn the country into a living tableau of The Handmaid’s Tale.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Apocalypse. They seem to have dropped Jesus altogether as the ostensible object of their adoration and instead became a cult of the Antichrist. Every single sin they claimed to revile—adultery, fornication, false witness, the Mephistophelean sin of overweening pride—is now embodied in their new god incarnate, Donald Trump.

Like Lucifer, he led them to the mountaintop and offered them the world if they would but bow down to him. And they obediently dropped like ninepins.

Ecclesiastical dervishes like Jerry Falwell, Jr., Franklin Graham, and Robert Jeffress seem to be working out the theology to replace Jesus in the holy trinity with Donald Trump. And the faithful lap it all up like bulimics at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

*   *   *

How in the world did we get here? Journalist Kurt Andersen, writing in his abundantly detailed Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, believes craziness was baked into the American cake from the moment the Mayflower hove to at Plymouth Rock. Whether the holy man was Cotton Mather, P.T. Barnum, or Deepak Chopra, Americans have been primed to believe with the faith of a five-year-old in Santa Claus. That said, he posits that there were cycles of remission, when rationality was apparently on top, and then outbreaks of fever, when the passion burned with naked flame. The latter applies to an age like this.

My own pet theory is that American craziness, while always abundant, was relatively contained until 9/11, which opened a Pandora’s Box of hysterical fear, one of the basic ingredients of irrationality. It was quickly followed by the invasion of Iraq, which unloosed an avalanche of vaunting that we were endowed with special powers to remake the world. Note an essential component of stupidity: we retaliated for 9/11 by invading a country which had nothing to do with it.

On the heels of the mournful realization that remaking the Middle East wasn’t all it was cracked up to be came the financial crash of 2008, a folly of such greed and wishful thinking that it pushed a sizable portion of the public, already emotionally labile from the previous two shocks, right over the edge. Everything that followed, like the birther mania, was a signal flare that the Republican Party and its assorted hangers-on had devolved from merely being a pack of cynical crooks to full-dress nihilistic cultists.

All of this was supercharged by the Internet, right-wing talk radio, and Fox News – media nonexistent during previous bouts of mania. They acted as an electronic petri dish to purify and amplify the craziness.

We are now seeing the infection of lunacy on full display, like the alien monster in John Carpenter’s The Thing bursting out of its human hosts. Where exactly it will all end is anyone’s guess, but the odds are not good that it will end well.

Geopolitics

America is not a lone region full of “special” people like the American Nationalists want to believe. It is part of the mechanism that is humanity. And when the cog in the machine breaks, the machine stops working.

Geopolitics revolves around national economic might and during the historical era of Modernity economic might was always procured by capital and the products and services that it offers. These products and services generate the national income which allow a nation to spend on bettering its peoples’ lives and/or on military means to submit other nations or to defend from such submission.

One thing is clear. The West, over the last 200 years, has been selling the most advanced products and this gained it the largest national incomes.

But, you do know, that the West decided not to share the wealth with its citizens.

Instead, it decided to invest in military means to submit other nations.

Yah. And it worked.

The West was hegemonic for all this time.

America was the leader and the rest of the world bowed on bended knee to America. Most did not like it. Most did not care for it. Most actually despised it. But they were powerless to do anything about it.

But things have suddenly turned lately.

China is now at the core of the factory of the world. It is at the core of the East-Asian supply-chain. And no East-Asian country would dare detach itself from this chain because its national economy would immediately collapse.

I mean, at the exception of ideological bull-dogs like Australia’s Morrison, everyone recognizes the hard reality that dominates the Geopolitical scene of this 1st half of the 21th century.

After it had lost the Yeltsin opportunity…

…of a near infinite supply of energy and resources…

…the West abruptly awoke to the shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world from its shores to East-Asia.

The Geo-Political world got enraged as Trump so well demonstrated for the whole world to see.

But the fact is that the American empire has lost its clothes :

American GDP
By all accounts America's GDP is largely inflated and the reality is that it could easily be half the size of what is announced officially (see hedonic adjustments)

Finance vs. Manufacturing
American production is no longer its core activity. Financial shenanigans are now what accounts for the bulk of its GDP.

Technology 
Technologically the US has fallen from its pedestal and has now to reckon with the emergence of China as a technological leader. This explains why the US is now panicking and literally copying Chinese political economics while drafting new legislation ordering the state to invest 150 billion in the technological development of its national champions…

GDP Growth is an illusion
American GDP growth over the last 40 years was generated exclusively by the injection of new money in the form of new debts. During the last year US total debt increased by one third the size of GDP ! . This is not just unsustainable it is pushing the can down the road until a reckoning is imposed by the facts…

Destruction of the American workforce
The incomes of the 99% have been stagnating and even sinking for at least 50% of them and this explains the sheer social misery that litters the land of the free.

Balkanization 
In the meantime the cohesion of the USA has been tanking and today US society is completely atomized as was so well demonstrated during its handling of Covid-19. Societal atomization means that the country is now unable to act as one unity. Each time it wants to undertake something the country shreds itself into multiple pieces going their own directions all at once. This is the best recipe to lose a war… the military knows that darn well and it wants to avoid that price !

So what we observe today is much noise and theater but very little really consequent actions.

But observers of the Geopolitical scene make a whole lot of this theater…

The fact is that the US military is not inclined to commit suicide. And so we discover that through various concomitant statements the US lately announced it is abandoning any possibility of direct defense of Taiwan.

The article is unfortunately in French.

We are entering in the early stages of the Western recognition of the new realities on the ground.

It will, without any doubt, take some time for the dust to settle but the outcome is now unavoidable for the following reasons :

1. Economic Shifts are in process. They cannot be stopped. By all accounts the shift of the economy world is irreversible and will further amplify going forward

2. The current global supply chain is fixed. The West does no longer have what it takes financially, nor societally, to set up an independent supply-chain. In other words it is forced to compose with East-Asia and more particularly with China.

3. China is gargantuan. By all accounts China’s economy is soon going to pass the size of the US economy in dollar terms and it will pass the combined West soon thereafter.

4. The world will continue without America. The internationalist wing, among Western big capital holders, wants to share in the profits generated by the Juggernaut China and by East-Asia. It is thus no longer going to sit passively when a Western political servant has a mental breakdown. Diplomacy will thus be forced to make a come-back soon.

In the meantime a last ditch propaganda effort is being made by the nationalist wing among big capital holders to try to cover China under a thick layer of dirt. But facts are necessarily going to emerge that will soon turn the tables on them.

5. China will grow to megalithic size and power. If it were not for “the Great Convergence of Late-Modernity” in the near future China’s economy should reach multiple times the size of the combined Western economies.

6. Convergences. The Great Convergence of Late-Modernity is the convergence of the following series of complex factors :

The multiple side-effects of Modernity are converging toward each other and starting to unleash all kinds of feed-back loops that are accelerating the die-off of life on earth. Many biologists, and complex-systems analysts, are warning that humanity’s activities are approaching a threshold after which the world natural systems will shift one after another outside of the bandwidth of life. Climate change is but one among this multitude of side-effects…

The present shift of the economy-world outside, of the realm of the Western civilization, is unleashing a mental breakdown on the West. And it will be extremely difficult for it to regain its composure and face the facts that are responsible for what is transforming into a real predicament for humanity.

The predicament of humanity is that to survive it has to abandon its present societal paradigm (the reason that is at work within capital) and adopt a new one (the reason that is at work within life).

Selections from Godfree Roberts’ extensive weekly newsletter: Here Comes China.

The expectation expressed by Russia and China is…

…that the US is no longer stable…

…and is becoming dysfunctional…

…and a bigger problem than what is worth to prop up.

A retreat, a crash, or a type of retrenchment from the world is imminent.

Russia and China. Top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi and Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev co-chaired the 16th round of strategic security consultations. This is a high-level meeting focusing on strategic cooperation in confronting both regional and global security and geopolitical threats. Or, in other words, “what to do about America and it’s war-loving-neocons”.

Quote:

China and Russia held a new round of strategic security consultations on Tuesday in Moscow, and during the frequent interactions between the two major powers in recent months.

The world has showed a dangerous trend of disorder or tensions in some regions, including the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Western Pacific.

All, and everyone, due to global strategic shifts made by the US,

Quote:

So Beijing and Moscow must keep close coordination to handle the upcoming situation.

Including how to establish a new order.

This new order will replace the US-dominated one.

This will occur once the latter gets totally dysfunctional.

Quote:

Chinese analysts said that the recent change has been generally caused by the decline of US hegemony.

Not only will the US pressure and hostility push China and Russia to stand closer...

... but the decline in Washington’s strength and influence (in some regions)...

... will also make Beijing and Moscow consider how (to figure out new regional order) to stabilize the situation and protect their interests after the US pullout.

The similar remarks made by China and Russia toward the US is a clear signal to the world that the US hegemony will no longer be tolerated.

The world order dominated by the US and its allies is unable to keep stability in many regions.

This failure of American order is causing more tensions and conflicts.

Weapons and nukes

We understand at the Saker Blog, that Russia has the weapons complexes and the ability to defend itself even in this climate of withdrawal from the many weapons treaties.

We also know that the US tried to force China to attend Nuclear Proliferation or Reduction talks with the US, up to the point of staging a meeting to pretend that China did not turn up.

China of course had actually declined the invitation, but reading the western media you will not know this. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/china-rejects-new-us-invite-to-join-nuclear-talks

The world has accepted that China had not done a major weapons build-out up to now, and if they did, it was muted. For decades, China only maintained the smallest nuclear weapons array.

This may be changing in front of our eyes.

After both Trump and Biden running all sorts of openly hostile efforts full-spectrum against China, a wise China, would ramp up production of MAD (Mutually Assured destruction) armories to counter any American aggressive action.

China urged the increase of sea-based nuclear deterrents amid US intensified strategic threat – https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1224773.shtml

My post published on Chinese social media: As the US is crazily implementing containment strategy toward China, China must intensify building its nuclear deterrence. Here is the translation. pic.twitter.com/shJHXUJ5FX

— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) May 28, 2021

Those that follow China and its news closely understand that if Hu Xijin says something like this, or writes a column such as this, the build-out of a Chinese nuclear deterrence is in full swing.

In the midst of these happenings, Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon papers leaked another top secret document. One that he had worked on, and kept secret for 50 years. Parts of it were obtainable but not the full document.

He drops a powerful warning of the present threat of nuclear war with Russia and China.

Here’s his thoughts…

Daniel Ellsberg: This Month We Must Discuss If We Should Go to Nuclear War Over Taiwan, Ukraine or Syria

The 1958 nuke China over Taiwan project was really quite amazing. The Pentagon wasn’t even ‘defending’ Taiwan, they wanted to do it over small islands held by the Chiang Kai-shek regime just 5 miles from mainland China. A classic bully move, ‘I have the right to punch you because you let your shadow touch me!’

“Celebrated whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, … now age 90…

… used the occasion of the April 30-May 1 commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his release of the Pentagon Papers…

…in an event organized by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst…

… to reveal that John Foster Dulles had proposed in 1958 that the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend to the President of the USA…

…that a nuclear exchange with China be launched in the Taiwan Straits.

Even though that would mean that Taiwan and its people would be wiped out completely.

The reason being for the sole geopolitical purpose of maintaining the United States “position” in the world.

I’m getting hungry

Right now I am drinking my favorite Shiraz wine from Australia and eating nuts, but still my stomach is a grumbling. I know that I can get some noodles, some rice, some dumplings, but really I am “hankering” (desiring) some delicious chicken. Whether it is BBQ or fully cooked.

You know, people in different areas cook chicken differently.

I grew up on Polish Hill in Pittsburgh that cooked the chicken in the oven with bacon on the top until the chicken was well done. A comparative cooking method in China is to cook it in mud, and the the chicken some out all moist and tender but well cooked. But here in the Southern section of China in the Guangzhou corridor, they like he chicken nearly raw with lots of exposed fat and grizzle. Not really to my liking.

I once had a Polish engineer visiting one of my factories and once he tasted the mud baked chicken, he devoured the entire bird. He sore that it reminded him of how his grandmother cooked chicken.

Why have another world war?

“The 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis, A Documented History,” Ellsberg quoted Dulles’s message to the meeting:

“Nothing seems worth a world war … until you looked at the effect of not standing up to its challenge.”

The RAND study explained that

“the issue then was, would we, as the joint chiefs, recommend the use of nuclear weapons to defend Quemoy, and Matsu, and Taiwan.

And possibly use seven- to ten-kiloton weapons with the expectation that … the Soviets would respond and would hit Taiwan.”

Finally:

“Let them try to jail me for disclosing this still-top secret fact today,” 

Ellsberg declared, adding that he was revealing the secret because, 

“I have no doubt whatever, that that discussion is going on in the Pentagon right now…. This is the month we have to be discussing the issue, in public, of whether we should go to nuclear war over Taiwan, or Ukraine, or Syria.”

The Grayzone published a summary: https://thegrayzone.com/2021/05/27/eisenhower-military-chiefs-nuclear-war-china-classified-taiwan-strait/

“Although the circumstances surrounding the U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan have changed dramatically since that stage of the Cold War, the 1958 Taiwan crisis provides a sobering lesson as the US military gears up for a new military confrontation with China.”

Of course the western and specifically the US provocative and unintelligent statements via their media containment complex continue. It is what Andrei Martyanov calls “a very acute case of a bipolar disorder .

Pentagon Special Forces nominee says US should ‘strongly consider’ training Taiwanese guerillas against ‘Chinese invasion’

Whether it is Taiwan, or Xinjiang or Hong Kong or any other area where propaganda can be manufactured, the US mighty Wurlitzer continues.

This is then the summary of the situation today:

• Ellsberg warns that the same talks that happened 50 years ago to possibly strike China with nuclear weapons is no doubt happening in the Pentagon today.
• Yang Jiechi and Nikolai Patrushev states that Russia and China must coordinate in order to establish a new order to replace the US-domination, once the latter gets totally dysfunctional.
• China is mass producing hyper-velocity MIRV ICBM’s armed with massive warheads in a frantic pace.
• Pentagon Insiders are horrified by the discussions and all warn that not only would America lose a war, but that could be destroyed and subjugated to an unfathomable degree.

Given the stature of Yang Jiechi and Nikolai Patrushev, I would consider the above some of the most significant moves in the world today. There are those who reason that as the US-dominated world order gets more dysfunctional, the urge for them to use nuclear weapons will become stronger. I will leave this here for you to make up your own mind and comment on what you see.

Moves around SARS–CoV-2 and its progeny Covid-19 and more leaks

There is also the major US accusation that Covid-19 was a lab leak and China is responsible. Yet China has no history of creating these kinds of bioweapons (if indeed it was created as such) but the US has a rich history of creating and using such weapons.

The acceleration of blaming China with respect to the virus is proportional to the financial and economic collapse of the west.

What west fails to understand is demonising China won't prevent its own collapse.

— The Sirius Report (@thesiriusreport) May 29, 2021

So why do we always say that Americans are effectively the most brainwashed people in the world?

Take a look at what happened to information similar to the Daniel Elsberg Pentagon Papers Leak…

…and his current leak of nuclear planning against China even to the point of demolishing and sacrificing Taiwan.

Godfree Roberts took a specific document and updated and annotated it for clarity. This is called The ISC (Needham) Report.

Published at the height of the Korean War, it validated claims by North Korea and China that the US had launched bacteriological warfare (biological warfare, BW) attacks against both troops and civilian targets in those two countries over a period of several months in 1952.

The Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of Facts Concerning Bacteriological Warfare in Korea and China (the ISC report)

The cleaned up, updated and annotated version is available for Kindle on Amazon for a small amount here. , And a free copy (not very readable) is available here

If you wonder why the Americans have not seen this, or have not known about it, this will give you all the information…

https://jeff-kaye.medium.com/censored-north-korea-accused-u-s-of-working-with-unit-731-war-criminals-on-bw-attacks-d7fd819ed8b7

Jeffrey Kaye says:

Secular vs. Traditional Values

An more than interesting visual for thoughts and reflection : the 2020 Inglehart–Welzel cultural map of the world by political scientists Ronald Inglehart (April, 2021) and Christian Welzel.

Some current geopolitical tensions can be seen through the distances on this map. One can imagine that this survey visual is significantly subject to change these days, through among others economic developments, political and media-psychological movements. Some triggered to find more distance towards corners while others moving towards centers and clusters.

My thought would be a map how much do different countries learn from each other in terms of values, followed by communication, society and governance. Might it not be that self-expression, traditional values have a harder time accepting other ways, even if it would be to the advantage of the actual practice and policy ??

It is noteworthy that today’s tensions are caused by differences in values, not by models such as capitalism or communism, not by economies.

Cross cultural awareness and mutual learnings with psycho-political projections/reflections is what counts for 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗚𝗘 towards a better and fairer future.

Everything is going crazy in America today

Consider the collapse of the remaining American companies. A this article clearly demonstrates.

The world is in flux. If that sounds like another virus, it certainly feels like it on some days.  Most of us have been pivoting so fast to adjust we are simply falling over from dizziness.  Are we still resilient if we refuse to get back on a twirling carousel? Sometimes it feels like we are moving too fast to even see the brass ring, let alone grab it. Rubbing a Buddha belly is a calmer alternative. No pivoting needed. A friendly little rub, smile and breathe…

Peace is not a commodity for politicians.  Despite past and current events, it’s not an item up for sale. Media rushes us from one regurgitated opinion to the next, parading it as news.  Things to “like” or “follow” directed by Google algorithms and data mining. Our worlds narrowed through complex AI that doesn’t yet understand the randomness of human thought. The internet that previously opened the world, has become a political and marketing tool making our personal worlds smaller and smaller. The informational windows to other worlds, ideas, and ways of living get lost in advert hit scores.

Believing “our” world is the whole world is a slippery slide into the mud of bigotry and intolerance. And, rudeness! I for one, am missing Miss Manners.  Poor thing crashed off stage faster than she could run out with her walker.  Slander and Libel grabbed their wigs running for the exit without waiting for Justice to keep up. Nobody was holding the door open for anyone.

Maybe being our “true and transparent” selves needs a few hard check stops. A different kind of “wokeness” that embraces the idea of getting along for the benefit of everyone in society. Why do manners matter in our changing world?  Nobody cares if the fork is different for salad or meat, when you’re hungry, it’s just a damn fork getting food in your mouth.

Manners and civility need a comeback. For all our sakes. If someone holds the door open, it doesn’t matter whether the door-holder is a man or, woman. I don’t feel my ability to open a door is in question. It’s just a nice gesture. Manners are a code of actions for consideration, respect and, grace. An acknowledgment of another, human. It is the foundation for a functioning society, of being -humane.

No need to spout false positive “thank-you’s” or to pretend you like something you don’t. We can still be transparent and true to ourselves while respecting the space and ideas of others.

Corporate America, is having a hard time in the pandemic as workers are quitting their jobs in droves. Walking resolutely away from environments that are now recognized as “toxic”.  Previously “normal” work environments that lacked basic respect for employees.  This attitude caused historical business losses of over $250 billion dollars per year.  Which begs the question, how much can companies afford to lose, before it hurts enough to change? Giants like Amazon and TJX have been churning people for years without regard for basic human dignity or, respect.  Dudes have no manners.

25 states have officially cut the extra $300 of Federal unemployment aid. In a sad display of very bad manners and name-calling, they claim a mere $300 is stopping people from working.  With a Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, people can’t afford to work. Not only is this 100% below what is needed today for a living wage, but in addition, employees are treated like disposable trash as companies rake in billions of dollars in clear profit.

Yes, corporate America, backed by an embedded political system, is screaming. They are furious that the pandemic has shown them with their pants down.  The “you can’t live without us” myth has been broken.  The truth is, corporate America can’t work without employees.  And, workers are now “woke” and demanding what they deserve.  Respect, a living wage, and more importantly, as 3 in 5 refuse to return to the “office”, an environment that is not toxic.  Where humanity is not just displayed as a pretty mission statement but transparently practiced with good manners.

My Mexican mocha coffee at Kaflex Roasters came with heart layered in. This small business survived the 2020 pandemic devastation. Why? Customers and employees agreed; it’s a pleasure to be here. It feels “real”.  Kindness and respect mix with the smell of ground coffee beans, people smile at each other.  “Good morning” and “thank-you” are genuine, not HR-directed practices. Good manners spread, a virus of consideration and kindness toward the stranger next to you in line. Everything seems to work better and the day is a little brighter.

It’s time for corporate and political America to wake up and “smell the coffee”.  We, The People want a Better America.

One based in good manners. Humane, inclusive and transparent practices for the good of everyone in our society.  We want a clear agenda of change that includes workers’ rights and protections.  A legal system that has equality and justice-directed enforcements. Affordable education. Respect.

America is barely 246 years old. Our version of democracy is an evolving experiment. It’s time for the system to pivot again.  Time for both politicians and corporations to say “thank you” and hold the door open for their workers.  It’s time. Make America Better.

But when and while the USA collapses, the rest of the world continues and are all ready to fill the vacuum that the USA leaves behind.

PLA exercise could be a rehearsal of combat plan over the island: expert

The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) conducted an exercise near the island of Taiwan on Monday with the largest number of warplanes ever recorded, which could be a rehearsal of a reunification-by-force operation, again sending a clear warning to Taiwan secessionists and the US that have been making provocative moves to escalate tensions in the region, Chinese mainland experts said on Tuesday.

A US aircraft carrier exited the South China Sea via waters south of the island of Taiwan also on Monday, a region close to the PLA warplane exercise. And analysts said the PLA displayed the capability of driving away foreign forces interfering in the Taiwan question.

Twenty-five PLA aircraft, namely two Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft, one KJ-500 early warning aircraft, four J-10 and 14 J-16 fighter jets, and four H-6K bombers, entered Taiwan's self-proclaimed southwest air defense identification zone on Monday, the island's defense authorities said late that day.

The number of PLA warplanes featured in the exercise was a record since Taiwan's defense authorities began to release information about PLA aircraft activities in the region on September 17, 2020, surpassing the previous record of 20 on March 26. The number of J-16s, a powerful fighter jet, was also the biggest of all exercises, media on the island said on Monday.

The exercise conducted by the PLA served as a warning to Taiwan secessionists and the US after the two had made a series of provocative moves, mainland analysts said.

On Saturday, the US Department of State announced new guidelines to encourage US government engagement with the island that reflects their "deepening unofficial relationship." Officials on the island recently also claimed that the island is drawing a line 30 nautical miles away from the island, attempting to deny PLA aircraft approaches.

Monday's exercise was characterized by the large number of aircraft, and as the PLA deepens its regular, combat-scenario drills near the island of Taiwan, the scale could continue to expand in the future. As this is normal, related parties should get used to it if they insist on provoking, Fu Qianshao, a Chinese mainland military aviation expert, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Taiwan's secessionist forces and the US must stop making provocations unless they hope to see further escalations in the region, mainland experts warned, noting that the PLA is taking pragmatic steps to make sure it can effectively reunify the island of Taiwan if it comes to that.

The exercise could be a rehearsal of its combat plan over the Taiwan island, and it could feature air superiority seizure, and attack on land and maritime targets, including warships of interfering foreign countries, Song Zhongping, a Chinese mainland military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

PLA's Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft target foreign submarines, the KJ-500 commands the battlefield, the H-6Ks attack maritime and land targets, the J-10s seize air superiority, while the J-16s plays a multirole of both aerial combat and attack, Song said.

Coinciding with the PLA's warplane exercise, the Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group, which held a series of drills in the South China Sea in the past week, left the South China Sea via south of the Taiwan island on the same day, according to the monitoring of the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI), a Beijing-based think tank, on Monday.

Overlying the flight paths of PLA warplanes released by Taiwan's defense authorities and the movement of the Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier released by SCSPI, observers said they were not far away from each other.

Citing analysts on the island of Taiwan, Taipei-based Central News Agency reported on Monday that the PLA warplanes likely simulated attacks on the US aircraft carrier.

Fu said that the PLA has been conducting daily exercises in the region, and it is the US warships' presence that is irregular. "If they pose potential threats to China's national security, we will surely take countermeasures, including monitoring," he said.

The PLA is rightfully responsible to safeguard peace and stability in the region when foreign warships and warplanes stir up tensions and make provocations, Fu said.

Similar exercises demonstrated that the PLA is capable of cutting off foreign interventions in the Taiwan region if the situation arises, as it has a powerful aerial combat system to drive away foreign maritime forces, including aircraft carrier strike groups, a Beijing-based military expert who requested anonymity told the Global Times on Tuesday.

China’s Artificial Sun Just Smashed a Fusion World Record

China’s “artificial sun” tokamak has sustained a plasma reaction for a whopping 101 seconds at 120 million degrees Celsius, setting new records in the field of nuclear fusion. The breakthrough could pave the way for a carbon-neutral energy future.

EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak), or HT-7U, is a custom-built fusion reactor that has operated in different phases since 2006. Like many of the world’s tokamak experiments, EAST has reached fusion before. As a refresher, inside the donut-shaped (or, sometimes, more spherical) containment of a tokamak, sun-hot plasma swirls in a circle that’s held in place by supercooled electromagnets.

This magnetic field is the only thing floating between 360-million-degree plasma and a bunch of human-made materials that obviously can’t sustain that temperature. The plasma results from smashing different nuclei together, fusing them rather than splitting them.

This requires a huge energy investment, which critics say means fusion will never really get off the ground. And so far, all tokamaks work for just a scant few seconds at lower temperatures before something goes wrong.

This is why EAST—which just properly “turned on” last December—running for 101 seconds at 120 million Celsius is such a huge deal. It’s a double whammy: a very long runtime at an extraordinarily high temperature. In 2018, the tokamak reached 180 million degrees Fahrenheit, or about 82 million degrees Celsius. But back then, EAST could only sustain the plasma for around 10 seconds.


That’s not hot enough or long enough, but 120 million degrees Celsius and 101 seconds, which EAST achieved in late May, certainly are. So, this is a record for both the required power-generating temperature and the duration for keeping the temperature at a stable level.

As for other high-profile reactors around the world, the U.K.’s MAST reactor recently made headlines with a new exhaust system that reduces heat 10 times better than its predecessor. In the meantime, the global International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is on track to build the hugest tokamak ever, with first plasma projected in 2030. Each experimental reactor has goals to help push technology forward to help all the others.

The future of EAST could involve lessons learned by ITER, Korea’s KSTAR reactor (which held the previous fusion record), MAST, and even private tokamak researchers that are chipping away at the major obstacles to fusion energy. All have the same goal: to sustain an extremely hot reaction and keep their equipment safely running for as long as possible.

Gosh! All of this stuff about society, and culture really makes me hunger for some fine Louisianian cooking!

Do you all have any idea what I am in the mood for? I am yearning for something like this…

I’ll bet you that you don’t. I’ll bet that you are thinking something like steak, a find hamburger, or some pizza or lasagna. Nope. That’s not what I am yearning for.

I know that many Americans in the audience don’t “get it”. But that’s because everyone can get mashed potatoes, corn, and cheesy elbows. But not here. they are special treats. Not to mention deep fried catfish and chicken.

If you have the ability to eat this fine, but basic food, then do so. I think that it’s wonderful. It’s delicious and wonderful and the smells and the taste are wonderful.

Do you wonder why China is asking serious questions?

Beijing called on the US to explain a respiratory disease outbreak in northern Virginia in July, 2019 and a large-scale outbreak of e-cigarette disease in Wisconsin.

“When will the US release detailed data and information on relevant cases to the international community? The United States owes an explanation to the international community.” 

Read full article →

Can you imagine what will happen if China is kinetically attacked?

A big part of the US industrial base is now in China.

The US would be attacking its own sources of food, commodities, and its own supply chain.

Looking at Elsberg’s ‘warning’ is this not a spectacular example of insane short-term thinking?

To end this section, taking the previous summary and adding one point, it looks like this:

• Ellsberg warns that the same talks that happened 50 years ago to possibly strike China with nuclear weapons is no doubt happening in the Pentagon today.  Is the Ellsberg warning more serious than what we think?
• Yang Jiechi and Nikolai Patrushev states that Russia and China must coordinate in order to establish a new order to replace the US-dominated one, once the latter gets totally dysfunctional.
• China is mass producing hyper-velocity MIRV ICBM’s armed with massive warheads in a frantic pace.
• Pentagon Insiders are horrified by the discussions and all warn that not only would America lose a war, but that could be destroyed and subjugated to an unfathomable degree.
• The US has clearly and unequivocally used bioweapons (even excluding Vietnam), in the past, and hidden this.

Conclusion: Unfortunately the mindset has not changed and the actions have not changed since the time described in both the Ellsberg report, or the reveals of the Needham report. This is currently the danger and is what we mean by doubling-down.

But I’m not done about Louisiana food…

Throughout the deep American South people eat this kind of food called BBQ. But you know, it must be the most misunderstood BBQ in America. In Boston, for instance a BBQ sandwich was nothing more than cold sliced ham and BBQ sauce. Ugh!

When in actuality, it’s really slow cooked brisket served on a hot toasty bun just dripping and oozing with delicious and tasty sauce.

I could use one right now.

Maybe with an icy beer.

Or two.

I remember going on work related travel to different factories throughout the Southern American states. AN we would make a point to stop at the various BBQ place sand sample their food. The BBQ varied regionally from place to place. All were just great! Just simply great!

Following on from the last China Sitrep, we have banking news, a cute helicopter and drone soccer.

E-Hang’s electric VT-30 travels 300km in 100 minutes. With eight propellers, two fixed wings, and a propeller at the rear, it achieves a balance of hybrid lift and push, so needs no runway. Its tri-redundant, fly-by-wire controls can be flexibly altered for multiple modes, implying a much higher safety level for the aircraft. Read full article  →

Chinese scientists set a new world record of achieving a plasma temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds in the latest experiment on Friday, a key step toward the test running of a fusion reactor. Read full article  →

China dominates consumer and commercial drones globally, and 369 exhibitors showcased 2,000 drone products in Shenzen this week. Mini drones the size of a wristwatch hovered next to cargo drones like four-seater planes. Kids played 3v3 drone soccer before a crowd of adoring parents.  Read full article  →

(They also say they need a million drone pilots!)

The Maglev trains are just running faster:  A groundbreaking ceremony launched a 620 mph maglev test line. The train uses superconducting magnetic levitation to disengage from the ground to eliminate frictional drag and a near-vacuum internal duct lines to dramatically reduce air resistance to achieve its speed. Read full article  →

European BRI Rail Freight rose 100% in 2020.  Austria’s Rail Cargo Group (RCG) transported 70,000 TEUs across BRI routes and, compared to 2019, doubled its Eurasian volumes and reached an all-time high of 700 trains running on these routes, This year, the company aims to run 1,000 freight trains. Read full article →

But the USA has signed agreements with the G7 nations to construct an American BRI to go “head to head” with the Chinese BRI.

Show me the money, the G7’s B3W will have a hard time replacing China’s BRI.

Biden and the G7s Build Back Better for the World (B3W) program is going to have a hard time without money and so far no one will say where it will come from. 

Finding the massive $40+ tn needed for infrastructure needed in the developing world won’t be easy. The US can’t agree on its own domestic infrastructure spending and how much money can it print for B3?

Comments that the private sector will pay are utter nonsense.

Say what you will China have already funded $4tn in projects. Most importantly, China saw the need in the developing world long before the West. 

The real question is where was the G7 for the past decade? 

Another major issue is that B3W funds will come with strings attached on democratic values, human rights, climate change, corruption, and the rule of law. Good luck. 

In the end it comes down to “Show me the money.”

Cats and Louisiana BBQ.

I used to have cats when I lived in Mississippi and Louisiana, and Texas. But you know, they were always happy to nibble on a piece of sliced brisket or chicken. But over all, my cats were just as happy to eat fish or whatever I had on hand. For them, eating a slice of brisket or a McDonald’s creamer when I brought home a  couple of cups of coffee were a real treat. I would drink my coffee, and they would have their creamers. Special times.

China will never allow island of Taiwan to go independent: vice foreign minister

And this warning is being ignored in the Pentagon. Which is why there are people speaking out warning that the neocons inside of Washington are fucking bat-shit crazy nuts, and America will not survive their arrogance and idiocy.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said China will never allow the island of Taiwan to go independent as Beijing hit back at a US-Japan joint statement which for the first time in half a century mentioned China's Taiwan.

"National reunification of the island of Taiwan and China is a historical process. It will not be stopped by anyone or any force. We will never let Taiwan go independent," Le made the remarks on Friday in an interview with the Associated Press.

Asked if there was any timeline for the reunification and if the current situation could continue to exist for many years, Le stressed that "it's a process of history."

Le said China is firmly committed to safeguarding national sovereignty, security and promoting national reunification. "We are prepared to do everything we can for a peaceful reunification. That said, we don't pledge to give up other options. No option is excluded."

Le's remarks comes amidst the recent provocation from the US and Japan's joint statement.

The direct mentioning of Taiwan was regarded as a severe interference in China's domestic affairs and sends a signal that Japan and the US are attempting to challenge China's possible moves to reunification.

Chinese analysts said the US and Japan's move will only send the wrong signal to the Taiwan separatists and allow the DPP to go further down the wrong path.

Le stressed the one-China principle is China's red line and no one should try to cross it, whether low-level or high-level, official engagement is what China firmly opposes.

"The Taiwan question bears on China's core interests. There is simply no room for compromise," the Chinese vice foreign minister noted.

CIPS is proceeding without delay

Maybe SWIFT will collapse upon itself.

China ramped up its Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) and set up clearing banks at all major offshore yuan trading hubs, like Hong Kong, Singapore, London, and Frankfurt. The CIPS clearing system operates during work hours of financial markets in every time zone.

Read full article from Pekingologist →

Russia won’t alienate China over US; ‘We’re smarter than Americans think’: Russian Ambassador to China

Russia does not expect impossible outcomes from the upcoming summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden in Geneva, and the two sides are unlikely to resolve important issues at the meeting, Russian Ambassador to China Andrey Denisov told the Global Times in an exclusive interview.

The ambassador noted that if the two leaders talk about issues related to China during their meeting, Russia will discuss them with the Chinese side. He stressed that Russia-China relations will not change no matter what attitude the US takes toward Russia.

Putin and Biden are set to meet in Geneva on June 16, the first meeting between the two leaders since Biden took office.

Some analysts believed that during their first bilateral meeting, Biden and Putin will discuss topics including strategic stability, disarmament, ecology, COVID-19 and conflicts in hot spots.

Denisov told the Global Times that Russia welcomes any measures that reduce tensions and competition, but they are also very cautious about what they can expect from Russian-American relations, especially in the context of the very tense relationship between the two countries.

He said Russia is a "realist" and does not expect impossible outcomes, and the summit is not likely to resolve important issues between the two countries. A better outcome is one that sets conditions for resolving problems in the future, said the diplomat.

Media reports showed that while the upcoming summit is seen by some analysts as an "ice-breaking" opportunity to reshape US-Russia relations, the two sides have been talking tough to each other and sending signals to lower external expectations ahead of the summit. Biden vowed to be tough with Russia and press it on human rights, while Putin has said he does not expect any breakthroughs from his meeting with US counterpart.

Some analysts pointed out that while it would be hard to break the ice in US-Russia relations, the US should stabilize relations and ease tensions with Russia so as to concentrate on dealing with China. As a result, the Geneva meeting may become an opportunity to lobby Russia.

In response to this view, Denisov told the Global Times that the idea that Russia would alienate China over the possibility of the US temporarily easing tensions with Russia is "very short-sighted."

"Russia is smarter than Americans think," he said.

The diplomat said that during the visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to China and the visit of Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, to Russia, both sides discussed US topics. If the US and Russia talk about issues related to China during the upcoming summit, the Russian side will also communicate and discuss it with China.

Idiocracy: Flawed comedy or terrifyingly prescient science fiction?

It should be no surprise to anyone that our culture is rapidly drowning in lowbrow media. The perception that as a race we are being worryingly dumbed-down is not something new. Is this gradual intellectual decline something we can stop? Or is it the inevitable trajectory of our current society? One film that has managed to stay relevant seven years after release is Idiocracy, Mike Judge’s satirical take on our dumbed-down future. But for a comedy that was a little low on laughs for my liking, why has it caused such controversy and managed to stay in the public consciousness so long? And should we be worried that this film is accurately predicting our future?

The funny side of idiocy

Idiocracy manages to have a sense of humour about the potential bleakness of our shared stupidity-induced future. Mike Judge’s 2006 comedy Idiocracy did just that, though was sadly overlooked at the time of its release. The film isn’t Judge’s best, with the comedy often falling a little flat. Idiocracy couldn’t possibly hold a torch to Judge’s Office Space (1999). The core idea behind Idiocracy is what makes it worthy of remembering: a satirical view of Earth’s future where everyone is incredibly stupid. Sounds simple enough, and not too hard to imagine (wait, there’s another reality TV show starting?!). All these years later, this small film is still causing a stir.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this now cult film, the premise is fairly simple. Joe (Luke Wilson) is an average guy, put into stasis as part of a scientific experiment. When the experiment is cancelled, he is forgotten and left in stasis, waking up accidentally 500 years in the future. The future is a bleak one, where the average IQ of the world is worryingly low.

A misunderstood sentiment

According to Matt Novak on Gizmodo’s Paleofuture, the film is an affront for suggesting eugenics is the answer to this potentially dire future, and anyone who enjoys the film should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Does anyone else think he’s missing the point a little bit? Sorry to disagree with you Matt, but I actually always thought Judge was being satirical. I don’t believe that he ever wanted to argue for eugenics. The rich vs poor set-up is again a deliberate choice, highlighting the prejudiced views of both ends of the economical spectrum. Not, as Novak argues, a simple boiling down of the situation to ‘the intelligent people are wealthy, while the uneducated people are poor.’ I would say that cheating husbands with a dozen kids is just as stereotypical as a frigid, unpleasant, career-driven, rich couple.

Novak claims that the film makes an unhealthy link between wealth and intelligence, but like many satirical films, it uses stereotypes to highlight the issues with that kind of thinking. In other words, Judge is using those precise stereotypes to make a point. Novak’s disgust at the stereotypes being used is entirely missing the point.

Nature vs nurture

The real premise of the film, in my opinion, is an argument for respecting nurture over and above nature. As such, it is in direct opposition to an argument of eugenics. The ‘stupidity’ that has taken hold of the country results in a great wealth of knowledge being lost. It is not the genius scientists, but the more menial labourers and their work that is missed most. Judge’s futuristic world needs mechanics to fix their robotic helpers, bin men and janitors to clean the country, gardeners, builders, etc. Is Judge really bemoaning the loss of the highly intelligent or asking us to look back at the basic pillars that keep our society going?

If you look at the main character’s story arc, the argument for nurture over nature is overtly apparent: you see an average man who was looked down on and not treated with much respect in his own time. When he is re-awakened in the future and found to be more intelligent, the nurturing atmosphere helps him to rise up and do more than he ever could have in the negative environment he was in before. The film is asking us to remember that everyone has potential, and that we need to be supportive of that no matter what their economic circumstances, who their families were, where they came form, etc.

While Idiocracy had a tiny limited release at the cinema back in 2006. Since then, it has found its place as a cultural yardstick for the dumbing down of society. When people bemoan the intellectual lows to which our society has sunk, referencing Idiocracy, I don’t believe that anyone is implying we should employ the use of the discredited science of eugenics. If anything, the film encourages us to always nurture potential, both intellectual and artistic.

A Historical piece from the 2nd World War

The secret deportations: how Britain betrayed the Chinese men who served the country in the war

During the second world war, Chinese merchant seamen helped keep Britain fed, fuelled and safe – and many gave their lives doing so. But from late 1945, hundreds of them who had settled in Liverpool suddenly disappeared. Now their children are piecing together the truth

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/may/25/chinese-merchant-seamen-liverpool-deportations

We need to talk about food

I like to believe that every problem in the world can be resolved with generous quantities of alcohol, fine delicious food, smiling and happy people, and dogs and cats scurrying about.

The world decoupling from the horrible U.S. economy

Well, just how does the world break its dollar habit?

The most clear explanation I ever heard as to why the dollar maintains its global status is really quite straightforward, the U.S. trade deficit. USD’s are constantly filling everyone’s foreign exchange reserve, so almost everyone has these extra dollars to use for trading between themselves.

Sow how does one get rid of this gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe?

• Buying treasuries – no, that is investing directly in the USD.
• Buying assets in the U.S. – no, same problem as 1, you have assets valued in USD and something the U.S. govt can seize from you.
• Buying assets in other countries – dang, you just gave them a boatload of dollars, that stuff is like dark matter.
• Buy hard assets in the U.S. and ship it back to China – this is your best bet, buy gold, silver, platinum, or any hard asset and ship it to your vaults, now does the U.S. let you do that?

The USA is setting itself up for a three-front war

An article published by Foreign Policy on Tuesday, entitled "China and Russia Turn Deeper Ties into a Military Challenge for Biden," quoted an former US politician as saying the US faces "a two-front war where we don't have a two-front military." This seems to be an emerging possible scenario that is puzzling some American analysts.

On April 14, Reuters published a similar commentary headlined "US faces test on Taiwan, Ukraine," which articulated the concern.

Yet the test is caused by the US itself, thanks to its recklessness in handling major global issues. It is Washington itself which has been stirring up troubles worldwide, rather than resolving crises. Now the tactic is backfiring - Western media are becoming concerned that "rising tension over both Ukraine and Taiwan is putting the Biden administration in a bind," or worse, lead to "a two-front war."

The Taiwan question is China's domestic affair, where the US is not supposed to interfere at all. The Ukraine crisis involves the issue that should be decided by the Ukrainian people. But the US won't cease creating tensions over it.

US political elites have shown little interest in self reflection. More importantly, they attach too much significance to major power geopolitical games. In their eyes, if the US makes concessions over the Ukraine issue, it could result in Russia returning to Europe. In that case, everything Washington has been struggling for over the past 30 years since the end of the Cold War will crumble to dust.

When it comes to Taiwan, the US regards the island, from the military perspective, as a crucial link in its first island chain to contain China. Diplomatically, the US is utilizing the island as leverage to boost secessionist forces in China, in an attempt to split the latter, or launch a "peaceful revolution."

Suppressing Russia and China has been a long tradition in US politics. Apart from former US president Donald Trump, who once attempted to cozy up to Russia, yet failed due to opposition from the Democratic Party, most US presidents tend to pile pressure on both countries. Yet the problem is that the US has found it increasingly difficult to do so.

The US' biggest challenge is at home, not so-called threats from China or Russia. If the US hastily engages in, or creates more external geopolitical tests, while not having resolved its own domestic problems, it will only have its nose rubbed in the dust both at home and abroad, not to mention winning the "battle" on either side.

The US has its own calculations. It is hoping to push the EU to the forefront of the Ukraine crisis, letting the EU invest in more resources while the US could just play a commanding role. In addition, although the US reiterated its support for Ukraine, the latter's top diplomat has been stressing that Ukraine "is looking for more than words," Politico reported on April 13. It means the US' capability is very limited. It is just like the way Washington is dealing with Beijing - trying to establish an anti-China camp with as many allies as possible. If the US believes it can handle the Taiwan question and Ukraine crisis as it wishes, or in other words, China and Russia, at the same time, it has overestimated its strength and wisdom.

The truth is, the US is not confronting two tests, but three. The biggest crisis is from its home affairs. The biggest battlefield for US policymakers is on US soil. The best solution for elites in Washington is to put more energy in focusing on their country's domestic puzzles and stop creating troubles abroad.

And Taiwan…

American neocons are pushing, pushing, pushing for a war regarding Taiwan.

... China remained the top issue on her mind, and on the minds of her fellow Republicans in the room. Haley hammered home that China remained an existential threat to the U.S. and democracies around the world and that government officials there should never be trusted.

Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative, building bridges, tunnels and other infrastructure projects in dozens of nations, is nothing more than a ploy to gain influence and power around the world, Haley said.

"What they're doing is they're running out the deck for such a time as this and then waiting for times like COVID. And they say, 'You can't pay it? Now give me your power grid. Now give me your military installation. We want your port.' Now you look at that map - it will send a chill up your spine at what they're trying to do."

Haley also painted a haunting portrait of the war China is waging in cyberspace. Beijing, she said, just adopted a data-security measure that states that all private data is now a national asset.

"Think about the health data they have. Think about the financial data they have. Think about the surveillance actions they have on all of us," Haley said. "Now think that that's in the hands of the Chinese military. The way President Xi sees it is, whoever owns the data rules the world."

Haley was asked by one GOP lawmaker how the U.S. could respond to China when it sells pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and so many cheap goods to America.

"Don't lead with fear. Don't be scared of China. Go after them strong. Go after them aggressively," the former ambassador said.

-Nikki Haley warns Republicans on China: 'If they take Taiwan, it's all over'

American generals say otherwise…

While acknowledging that uniting with Taiwan is a "core interest" for China, Milley signaled that he thought Beijing will pursue such ambitions through peaceful means.

"The internal politics of China are up to China, as long as whatever is done is done peacefully and doesn't destabilize the region nor the world," Milley said.

Milley appeared in front of the committee to discuss the Pentagon's Fiscal 2022 budget request, alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Rachel Esplin Odell, a research fellow in the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute, said Milley's comments "basically reaffirmed the longstanding U.S. One China Policy, which includes the understanding that the United States supports any peaceful, uncoerced resolution of cross-Strait differences."

"However, a somewhat more accurate statement of longstanding policy would have been that cross-Strait differences are up to both China and Taiwan to resolve peacefully through mutual agreement,"

"Nonetheless, Gen. Milley's comments are, on the whole, a welcome corrective to dangerous rhetoric from some analysts and politicians in Washington that portrays Taiwan as a strategic asset for the United States that must be kept separate from China. It is encouraging that Gen. Milley recognizes that danger," she said.

-Nikkei

What is the USA doing?

All of this isn’t secret information. It’s obvious and only the most deluded sheeple can’t see the build up towards war that the United States is marching towards. Knowing what is spread out before you all, as above. And noting that China and Russia are not fools.

What do you think they are going to do? Wait until the USA does something stupid? Or are they going to take proactive steps to castrate the “mad dog” before it infects the entire world with it’s madness?

I tire of this insanity.

It makes me want to gather up all the lunatics, lock them up in cages and bury them deep deep down in a place that they cannot harm themselves, or anyone around them.

But on the bright side there is China.

And China is doing well, they know what is going on. They are strong and formidable. And no matter what crazy-assed plans the Idiocracity world of America might think up, China is there to deal with them promptly.

I hope you enjoyed this visit in news that is unavailable to Americans. I’m tired and hungry. You probably didn’t notice. So I am going to go and eat some food. Have a great day you all!

I’ll leave you with this…

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Articles & Links

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• You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
• You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
• You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
• You can find out more about the author HERE.
• If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Well, aside from being thrown into a Thai jail for a couple of weeks, that is.

Anyways, here is a piece that I found on the UNZ site. It’s worth a read, not so much for the content (which is good) but for the comments that it attracted. You end up seeing a nice group of American society in the disparagement column, and some thoughtful analysis in the Brit and Aussie columns.

I like to read what other expats have to say about their experiences. As, well you should all know, everyone has a story and often those of expats tend to be the most colorful. This particular story revolves around a fellow in Thailand who made the mistake of fighting back when he was being scammed by locals. That’s  a big no-no.

We have a saying in America. It goes like this… “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”.

The phrase ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do’ means that ‘when you are living in, or visiting, a community of people, you should follow the laws and customs of that community’. Literally, the proverb means that when you are in Rome, you should act like the Romans.

-'When in Rome, do as the Romans do' 

Well, he didn’t follow this very simple advice, and ended up paying for that mistake. This is his story. And the comments are really interesting.

As with all reprints, the usual disclaimer apply.

For young guys, yes… rise up and abandon the creeping meatball. I don’t care if it’s the UK meatball, the US meatball…. just get out while you can. There is serious talk of raising exit fees!

-Franz

As an expat myself, I am both charmed and repelled by the experiences of other Americans as the peek outside of the gulag that the inhabit.

Some comments are gold. Some remind me of bad experience I have had with Jerk-offs, and others remind me of just why I left. I really enjoy the more thoughtful and productive comments, and dialogs. they point to some interesting trends.

The ‘least developed’ European countries have the most interesting long-term prospects, at least as places I like to live."

Yeah, and they know it.

I worked steel, plus allied fabrications. These countries are buying up razor wire faster than anyone can make it! Trust me, in a few years, countries that are not yet holes will be off limits to wanderers.

-Franz

While you are reading it, please keep in mind that one person’s happiness is meaningless to another. We all live within our very own realities.

Here is the article with comments embedded within.

gotmituns says:

The only ones “escaping” from our wonderful and proud American nation are the cowards and shirkers who wouldn’t do either side any good when the shit hits the fan in this country. Nobody needs such people in their midst.

With my Escape from America series, I’ve interviewed American ex-pats who have settled in Mexico, the Philippines, Hungary, Costa Rica, Brazil or England, etc., but you’re constantly escaping from one country to the next, with the goal of experiencing all 180 of them! What made you choose such an unusual lifestyle, and how did you prepare yourself for it?

No preparation whatsoever and, in fact, no plan.

I’d had what’s called a ‘liquidity event’ back in NYC. Two, actually: a startup sale and then an IPO. Which just means I don’t have to work again if I don’t want to.

I was burnt out. 15 years of 10 hour days, grinding towards some pointless goal of accumulation. When I cashed-out I wasn’t sure what to do next.

I looked around and decided it was time to leave NYC and the US in general.

The path the country was heading down was pretty obvious to anyone willing to look.

So I threw a bunch of stuff in storage. Locked up the apartment. And left.

That was 2017 and I’ve only returned now and then: for weddings or near-deaths.

I hope to never have to return permanently.

Radicalcenter says:

... mere permanent residency in another country never requires giving up US citizenship, so why renounce US citizenship if mere permanent residency in the other country suits one’s purposes? 

(Permanent residents often have the right to use the public healthcare system the same as citizens. Some countries, like Russia, give them the right to vote in local elections.)

US citizens who reside abroad full-time do indeed have to file a US income tax return even on income earned abroad. 

But in 2021, a married couple can exclude the first $217,400 per year from US federal taxation:

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/figuring-the-foreign-earned-income-exclusion

In 2022 the exclusion rises with inflation, probably to $224-225,000.

The system is unfair, grasping, and should be abolished. 

But American worldwide taxation shouldn’t be a deterrent for most Americans who would seriously consider residing abroad. Seriously, what percentage of older American couples moving abroad will have more than $225,000 in income per year while they are retired? 

Not many.

In Tirana, I ran into a folk singer who performed in Turkish, but was actually an American! In his early 40’s, “Dandelion Lakewood” left the States nearly 6 years ago, and has been in Europe ever since, mostly in the Balkans. Busking, he needs just $12 a day to survive.

In Tirana, Dandy was paying $8 daily to share a room with another American. Dandy has slept outside, it’s not a problem.

Different people have different requirements. You’re obviously in a different category, but most Americans with cash would not have made your choice. You told me you once drove from Atlanta to Juarez to sample an interesting Chinese buffet. Do you think you’ll ever get tired of traveling? If so, where might you settle down, and why?

Right.

And I don’t make the money point to brag or anything. I just got lucky. Right place, right time.

The bigger point I wanted to make is that guys like me are leaving the US in droves. Even before the pandemic.

We are not better or smarter than those that didn’t get lucky.

But I think some of us realized that the “juice wasn’t worth the squeeze”. So we bailed.

I feel a kinship with anyone that has left America, regardless of their situation.

PJ London says:

You sound like 99.9% of Americans, totally anal and caring only about their bank balance. 

The rest of the world (and yes I have lived in 8 countries) have a far better life, as they do not rank existence on the thickness of their wallet. 

Given a free choice and some income I would live in a Muslim country or eastern European. I would move to Abkhazia tomorrow if I could. Unfortunately, in my 70s, my travel and choices have become limited.

In terms of traveling and settling down.

I don’t know.

I have a reckless streak. I always have. Going to Juarez to eat Chinese food, or moving a bunch of gold over the Burmese border, or spending weeks in a Thai jail, or designing the interior of some Chechen billionaire’s yacht. I just can’t stop collecting experiences.

That, to me, is real wealth.

I’ve been to around 90 countries at this point.

There are a handful of places I could see myself staying long-term. For me, they have the right combination of cost of living/quality of life. Decent infrastructure. Nice people. Low-ish inequality coefficient.

They’re usually Muslim/Asian countries.

I think that was the biggest surprise.

I want to avoid the forced degeneracy of the West.

This is weird as, in my youth, I was the biggest champion of orgies and drugs and personal freedom and all that faux-liberal youth-culture decadent bullshit.

Alfred says:

The issuance of a second valid passport should therefore be considered an exception to the one passport policy and will be issued at the discretion of the Consular Officer. If issued it will be valid for a maximum of two years.

U.S. Embassy and Consulate in the Netherlands – Second Passports

I like being around happy, multi-generational families.

People eating together as a family or flying kites in a park or a group of old-timers nursing a 3-hour conversation over a cup of coffee.

They still do that!

I am not ready to stop.

Perhaps that is the recklessness I was referring to earlier.

In German, real estate is ‘Immobilen’. It’s ‘immobiliere’ in French. Even without knowing Kraut or French, I bet you can deduce the meaning… purchasing a home renders one immobile.

A lease is a landlock.

You’re stuck in one place, one culture, one point of view.

To stay in the same place still seems like death to me.

Or perhaps a series of small compromises, small deaths, that add up to a more prolonged expiation.

Disclaimer says:
The introduction of Nassim Talebs book “Black Swan” has a interesting paragraph about growing up in Lebanon in the 1960s.  It is worth revisiting...

"Increasingly, Celebrities and the upper 10% of US society have been getting second passports for themselves and their families for quite some time. After the financial crisis of 2007-08 it seems this trend accelerated. Its also illuminating how many of the upper 10% also have real estate overseas. These people are not doing these measures for fun. And they sure as heck keep their Plan B quiet."

The goal of travel is to court and embrace discomfort.

Otherwise, you’re just a fat Boomer on a cruise!

What did you do to spend weeks in a Thai jail?! And how were you treated by the other inmates?

To many white nationalists, Muslims are just low IQ losers, and Orientals are just conformists with disgusting culinary habits, yet both groups have managed to maintain their heritage, and hence dignity, better than the degenerate West. Is there any hope for white people, or are they condemned to rage impotently online as their societies unravel? Is Europe better off than America? And which European countries do you think have the best prospects?

The Thailand story is sad–and typical.

I’ll tell it here as a warning to anyone reading.

This stuff happens and, in retrospect, you should not handle the situation in the way I did. Linh, you can chop this if you don’t think it’s relevant.

I was in one of those seedy beach resort towns filled with decaying, SPAM-tinted Anglo men and their 21-year-old Isaan wives.

I was talking to as many of the men as I could, as they figure fairly prominently in a book I am working on.

A few of the blokes had warned me of a scam going on in that particular town.

The locals would wait until you rented a scooter and had a few beers at some local bar. Then, when you scooted off home, they’d put three teenagers on a shittier scooter than yours and drive full speed into you. The cops would conveniently be nearby to handle the proceedings.

I ignored this warning as typical ‘falang’ fearmongering.

But sure enough, a week into my stay this happened to me.

I’d had a big Chang beer and puttered off home.

Three kids on a crappy Vespa (motor scooter) hit me out of nowhere. Cops come out. from behind a nearby building: ‘You drunk Mister! You come to station and make right!’ They sounded like some Hollywood-stereotype from the 80s. But they were real and extremely angry.

I was terrified.

I had had a beer and driven my scooter (like everyone else in that town) but I had no idea what my ‘rights’ were.

Ha!

We went to the station and the officer demanded 40,000 baht to make it go away, plus some money for each of the three teenagers that were on the scooter.

In the meantime, they had already gone to the hospital after the accident and returned, bandaged up, with hospital bills ready to go.

They’d done this under an hour.

All three presented the hospital bills to me meekly.

I think they were another 60,000 baht.

Conveniently, 100,000 baht is the maximum you can withdraw from a Thai bank branch in one day.

Around $3k.

I told them this was absurd.

I ‘knew my rights’. Typical American arrogance.

After two hours of yelling at each other via Google Translate in their sweaty little station, they made me go back to my apartment and give them my passport, told me they’d be in touch and that I was not to leave Thailand.

Jeff Stryker says:

Michigan Native & Long-term South East Asia (SEA) Expat Here

I cannot say I would prefer a Thai jail but I would live on Thai beach in a fishing hut & let lizards crawl up my anus before I would return to the low-cost housing of Greater Detroit Washtenaw county.

I spent 30 K building my estate here & the irony is that my grandmother’s condo in Washtenaw County was worth $400 K in 1986 & after it was sold 20 years later it was worth 50 K-and my brother told me that whoever bought it was a fool. That is property value in Michigan for you.

Not long ago on FB I got ahold of a Polish kid who shared my dorm room at Central. The poor fool is still stuck in Flint. His formerly tidy if modest Polish-Catholic neighborhood is one great big crack house.

So that is one expat’s response.

As for Canukistan, well, they may export our leaders but try immigrating there. They don’t want us.

Americans that travel a lot can legally have two passports.

Not a lot of people know this.

It’s the same passport number but you can usually bank on the fact that if you get into trouble somewhere, it will take time for the various government departments to communicate with each other, and you have a window to clear the country.

I’d talked with a nice local lawyer girl after this happened and her advice was to get the hell out of Thailand. So that’s what I did.

I was gone within 48 hours, this time via a land border, which I assumed was insecure.

I crossed into Cambodia, made my way to Phnom Penh, and then flew to Bali for a few weeks.

Stupidly, I returned to Thailand a month later.

I thought somehow the problem would have ‘gone away’, as it was all a scam.

Ha!

They grabbed me at the airport, after clearing customs. That’s always the shitty part. They let you clear customs and grab your bag, thinking you are free. And then they grab you.

My passport number had been communicated to Border Police.

They were as surprised as I was that I had returned!

The charges were now serious.

In addition to injuring others on a scooter, I had tried to flee the country.

A few other minor charges.

Worst case: I was facing up to 3 years in a Thai prison.

I would now be remanded until I had a chance to appear before a judge. There were a series of holidays going on, related to the new King’s ascension, so the whole country was closed for at least a week. Bad timing on my part.

I spent around two weeks in a Thai jail back in the town where the crime had been committed.

Mulga Mumblebrain says:
It is very hard to contemplate leaving your homeland. Just leaving Sydney, that I knew like the back of my hand, but was unaffordable, was a dreadful break. 

Unfortunately, Australia, that from c.1970 to 1990 was making good progress in creating a decent society, has since fallen into the Pit of Hell, led by the Right, monsters like Howard, Abbott, Morrison et al, and the complicity of the zombie remnants of the ALP, now the Another Liberal Party. 

All driven by the Murdoch cancer. 

Now the place is locked in a suicidal frenzy of treacherous and deeply racist Sinophobia, after decades when China did us NOTHING but good. Such duplicity is bound to get its just desserts-and soon.

The Thai jail is not a place I’d want to return to.

I was new so I had to sleep with my head directly next to the open toilet in the corner, my head getting kicked every time someone went to shit in the middle of the night.

I did meet a lot of nice Burmese guys in there, who insisted on sharing every single meal they had with me.

They taught me how to sleep with a water bottle under your neck, as it helps your posture on the concrete floor.

There was a Dutch man who’d killed his Thai wife.

A few Americans and Australians recently nabbed on drug charges. Lots of Iranian guys. They were the most aggressive towards Americans.

The common theme from everyone was, ‘I was set up’. I began to doubt my own story.

Fast forward a few weeks later.

I am out on some sort of conditional release.

They have both passports this time. I have to check in every week to a ‘parole’ office and wait for my official trial date which is set 4 or 5 months in the future.

I can’t leave Thailand.

Radicalcenter says:

Sweet numbers, brah. But that works only if you can avoid spending all the profit on the next, also wildly appreciated house, right?

One can do this by moving to a house that is smaller, older, or in a less desirable climate or location, of course. That isn’t a good option for everyone, though, especially families. We have a number of children, so we need to move someplace bigger, not smaller.

Once past that stage of life, yeah, it’s usually feasible to downsize and come out ahead that way on housing costs and equity: i.e., sell a big house and buy a smaller house. That way you come ahead even if you stay in the same locale, saving/investing some of the proceeds and/or having a lower monthly mortgage payment.

Also, those inland “flight” / retirement areas aren’t so cheap anymore. 

One used to profit from expensive coastal and/or big-city home sales and buy really cheap inland. But this is changing fast. Primarily due to the acceleration of decent people fleeing even mid-sized cities (not just NY, LA, Chicago, Houston), and millions working mostly online for the first time.

Home prices continue to rise far faster than our salaries/wages in booming country & exurban counties across Utah, Nevada, Texas, Florida, eastern OR and WA, Montana, Wyoming, etc.

My mother is selling her house in a fairly expensive part of NJ and buying out West. The prices for the newer houses far from any city in Utah or Nevada, are shockingly higher than when we started looking in earnest less than two hears ago. We thought we were savvy and sufficiently apprised of costs in these boom-towns, but nope.

In the two inland flight areas we’re looking at, newer-home prices are going up maybe 4x faster than my Mom’s house. Houses we thought might cost $300,000 are surging to $400,000 and $500,000. If we thought she might pick up a house with a certain amount of property for $400,000, it’s now $600,000 to $800,000.

As for California real estate, man, you killed it! 

I’m happy for you. I too would have bought when you did if we had lived in Cali then. We’d try to buy in SoCal even now, as overpriced and overcrowded as it is, if we weren’t raising children. But we won’t subject our kids to the California curriculum much longer — it’s getting more extreme by the month. Nor will we live in a jurisdiction with “vaccine” “passports”, which may be on their way here. In the new lockdown America, even the prospect of real estate profits isn’t enough to keep families in certain places long-term, like California.

Also, how are young Americans to buy real estate to raise their own families? The artificially low interest rates won’t last. And even rock-bottom rates don’t help if you can’t come up with a down-payment. A 20% down-payment could easily be $70-80,000 or more in many areas with good jobs. Many, probably most, Americans don’t inherit a house. Given the number of children we have, ours won’t each inherit a house either. How do they ever get on this absurd merry-go-round?

When home prices consistently riser faster than salaries and wages, this cannot serve most people well in the long run. You made out very well, and we may do alright, but this system already hurts more people than it helps, and it cannot go on forever.

And before you ask, no, the embassy does nothing.

You’ve watched too many television dramas. They only intervene in capital crimes or a crime that makes the US look bad.

While I was in the jail, they told me to hang tight and let them know if I was being mistreated.

When I got out they gave me a list of lawyers.

I picked the one who bragged to me that ‘Her husband was a high up police officer’. In any other country, this would have been a warning sign, but I figured in Thailand, it was a golden ticket.

I hang out in Thailand for a while.

Avoiding scooters and bars. freaking out, obviously, but pretty powerless.

No amount of American money could help me at that point. The government didn’t care.

The “trial” was bizarre.

No visitors are allowed. The courtroom I was in was underground. You’re brought to a jail before the trial where you have to take off your shoes and belt and then stand in a cage inside the trial room.

I was with three other guys in the cage.

There’s no one in the courtroom aside from some grim-looking guard with a rifle.

Jeff Stryker says:

An Expert Speaks

[1] You can stagger around drunk & be puking on yourself in Siam & nobody will care a whit.

[2] However, you can stone cold sober & drive & if you get into an accident…you are in trouble.

[3] Generally, you can buy yourself out of any reasonable situation for a few grand. You really should not be traveling in SEA if you don’t have $3000 spare cash in the event of a serious situation.

[4] It would be typical of an American new comer to believe that Americans are not detested overseas & that being American will mean jack in SEA. Canadian? Maybe a little respect. British? Okay. American? Zero. The USA is regarded as the worst Superpower that ever existed & the average white American is regarded as a loudmouthed hick & ignorant too boot. However, in Siam, generally Thais don’t care.

[5] If you get locked in jail its the other American-hating nationals like Iranians, of whom there are a considerable number, or even Pakistanis who will threaten you for political reasons. Thais do not care. For that matter, even some Aussies or Brits are anti-American to come at you in an Immigration jail.

[6] Doing drugs is a tricky business. If you have to do drugs, score from ladyboys or from hotel staff of a younger hipper variety who themselves smoke weed. You can buy your way out of a weed bust, but Ya Ba & Meth are going to get you time. If you deal drugs or try to smuggle them in Pattaya or Bangkok, you are so stupid you should commit suicide when you get busted. Which you will be. Scoring drugs randomly on the street will always be a set up. With Tuk Tuk drivers or taxi drivers who ask you if you want to purchase drugs it will be a set up. You can score in Sukhumivit around Soi 4 from the Africans but they are periodically hit for raids.

[7] Many bar girls or hookers are meth addicts.

[8] An American married to Issan girl who does not know these ropes is not very bright.

[9] Make one or two semi-important friends.

[10] Remember the property laws. They are not in your favor. Property belongs to your wife.

Many posters here are naive hicks who have no business being outside the small city or town they were born. Some hicks are scammed in SEA.

After an hour of waiting, a prim little woman walks in, sits down at a table facing the cage.

She calls out your name and you walk to the front of the cage.

She reads your file out loud: the charges, I guess. It’s all in Thai.

My lawyer is then allowed to enter the room.

They talk quietly for a few minutes in Thai.

She’s very deferential, not making eye contact with the judge.

The lawyer then approaches the cage and asks if I am sorry.

I’m ready: I know this is my cue to turn on the histrionics.

I bow and wai repeatedly at the judge, the guards, the other Thais in the cage.

My lawyer had prepared me.

I repeat the Thai phrase I had prepared, over and over again and again. “I am so sorry and ashamed. I am so sorry and ashamed.” Likely mangling the pronunciation.

I cry. I plead.

The judge looks at the lawyer. Laughs.

Scribbles something on the file and then proclaims something in Thai. Before the lawyer has a chance to translate, I’m taken by a guard from the cage back to the primary jail in the courthouse.

I sit there for two hours.

Eventually, they call my name and my lawyer is at the jail door.

She’s smiling.

If you’re interested, my total penalty was…wait for it…a 100,000 baht fine paid to the court and an agreement to ‘not do anything bad in Thailand’ for one full year.

Emslander says: 

Your experience with the Thai legal system is fairly typical of experiences with any legal system anywhere.  I have drilled it into my sons’ heads from birth to NEVER get involved with the police other than to say “Yes, sir” or “No, sir.” I told them that, if they wanted bad attention or to be punished, to just come home and I’d accommodate. They mostly complied. The deeper you get into any sort of trouble, the more it will cost you in time, money and degradation.

I pay my lawyer another 100,000 baht, wait to get my 100,000 baht bond back from the courthouse (which has to be fronted by a Thai…in this case, my lawyer), and I am on my way.

I fly to KL that night.

I bear no ill will towards the Thai people.

I made a stupid mistake and, in retrospect, should have paid the fine upfront. Scam or no scam.

The normal Thai people live in a shitty, corrupt system. They’re just trying to get by. At least they have the comforts of family, community, culture, and tradition to return to after a long day of sentencing Americans to prison.

Disclaimer says:

In response to a comment by @obwandiyag who said 

“…Wait till he needs a doctor…”

The medical care in most of the world is far better than in the US. Its not even close. US is ranked 37th (and dropping) on quality of medical care which is basically dead last in the first world. 

US medical care was the best in the world until around 1975 or so since then its been steadily downhill.

To answer your earlier question, I think most of the white nationalists are the disgusting pigs. Potato-shaped genetic-mutt trash dropping rancor and CheezeIt crumbs all over their cum-stained keyboards.

There is no hope for the United States if these guys are the vanguards of “our” future. I’ll take the “Orientals” or the Muslims any day of the week.

Europe is a weird case.

As a political or economic union it’s toast, but the individual states will still have a lot of interesting possibilities. In many ways, Europe’s inevitable dissolution is good for guys like me.

It will be easier to get in and purchase citizenship, or property, or whatever. The fragmentation of Europe will be a boon for those fleeing the West.

The ‘least developed’ European countries have the most interesting long-term prospects, at least as places I like to live. I’d look for those that are food-secure and have good access to clean water.

john cronk says: 

I find the guy’s life as described to be mis-spent, randomly purposeless and morally bankrupt. He may as well have been an ant or a fly. However, the subject of escaping the deteriorating West is a salient one and I’m interested in how it can be done in a sensible, considered, and productive way.

There are some nice towns in Bulgaria (mostly in the Rhodope foothills) and Albania that I’d consider long-term. Portugal was great until the Golden Visa, and will now be flooded with Brits heading back to Spain or Chinese opportunists.

I’ve always been a fan of Poland, of Polish cities and people. Georgia and Abkhazia are gorgeous and ripe for sustainable development–whatever that means.

Northern Spain, west of Basque country, towards Galacia, is gorgeous and peaceful. There are some great small towns in Slovakia but you have to be ready to handle Gypsies. Northwestern Greece, in the mountains, has a great climate and food culture. No one will bug you there.

There’s also East Asia, but that’s a whole other article.

Reading about your adventures everywhere, some readers might think you’re just an anchorless hedonist, but you’re actually happily married, and your wife does travel with you. Since it’s nearly impossible to synchronize wishes or demands on the road, this is very rare. You’re very lucky. To wrap up, do you have advice for Americans who might want to get out?

Yes, for much of the past 5 years of non-stop travel my wife has been by my side. It’s been pretty amazing and I am incredibly fortunate to have someone so willing to be ‘unsettled’ throughout the world.

It’s always fun to travel alone but having someone to wake up and make breakfast for–no matter the weird city we’re in–is pure pleasure.

For those looking to escape, my advice would be to have a plan but not to commit to it too firmly.

Too many people over-utilize the Internet to the detriment of on-the-ground intelligence.

I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who’ve ‘sold everything’ back in the States and then bought a one-way ticket to Fethiye or Chiang Mai without ever visiting these places once! All based on some Youtuber’s drone videos.

It’s ridiculous.

These are, unsurprisingly, the people that go back to Michigan in a few years.

Once travel opens back up, get your money right in the US first. Don’t burn bridges.

Then, pick a region.

Pack minimally.

I recommend warmer countries first simply because there’s less to pack. Don’t worry about booking an apartment for a month. Book a few days on Airbnb. Move around to a different neighborhood. In a city like Jakarta or Yangon or even Milan, you can have a dramatically different experience based on your neighborhood.

Keep in mind, no matter where you travel, you’ll always bring yourself along. If you aren’t happy in your own head, in your own body, then no amount of wandering will change that.

Jonathan (41-years-old)

cohen says:

Linh
You are doing a good job to some degree in telling the audience the real interesting and historical stuff about counties you travel to.. unlike you, when I travel I don't talk to “intellectuals”. 

I to go to small cafes and talk to locals who don't speak a word of English but somehow there is always a one eyed men among blinds, one who wants to speak and brush up his English with in the crowd. To me that is fun. 

The most common bonding is the sense of humor and bonding through jokes. That is something so common among people of various background. Try that experience next time.

Your stories about Serbia, and Lebanon did lack information. For instance, in Belgrade the American bombing or missiles attack were incredibly precise and ironically US got away bombing the Chinese Embassy by claiming an error. No way Jose. The defense ministry building destroyed were among big building and in front of each. There was no damage to any neighboring buildings.

Philip Morris bought the Serbian Cigarette company for one dollar? and the Yugo (bad or good beside the point) car company was sold to an American car company for 1 dollar. There are three KPMG offices in Belgrade. Why an American company needs 3 offices in the same city. Privatization my man.

You are hung up on Albania. Did you see the digging of an old gladiator arena by the sea? Or their political parties. People like me care less about the nice pictures of food from a restaurant menu. At least I for one.

Go to Jakarta, or Casablanca and see Muslim women with their Hijab driving taxi without fear of any physical harm. You can not imagine that happening in America, This is information and not pictures of food which is very subjective. Try to go to Tangier in Morocco and get a taste of Europe and Africa in one place. And the weather one has to experience it oneself. Daniel Craig has a house in Tangier on the Atlantic side (lot of French artists, mostly fags).

Talk to a native Jews of Casablanca and learn why on earth they don't want to go to their “promised homeland”. The answer would surprise you. I was amused when one of them in a synagogue said “Then what the hell we will be doing there once we get to Israel”.

Try some volcanic islands in Indonesia where Comodo dragons still roam. Or Lake Biakal. Very different than the food information with prices.
Put some information in your writing that would be worth reading. Food? Who gives a sh… We have the tendency to talk about foreign foods and feel cultured and well informed.

Or at least that HIS opinion.

I liked the story. Seems like this fellow was in the right place, at the right time, and husbanded his money well. Good for him. My life has been one scramble after the other, with no time to take a breather.

Americans have a lot of issues they need to sort out before they go elsewhere. One of which is the hooks and claws that “Uncle Sam” has in just about everything you do. And another thing is the bad Intel that you have. You are better off living under a mattress for the last forty years than listen to anything available off the internet.

The Ugly American

All of this reminds me of an old movie titled “The Ugly American”.

An intelligent, articulate scholar, Harrison MacWhite, survives a hostile Senate confirmation hearing at the hands of conservatives to become ambassador to Sarkan. Sarkan is a southeast Asian country where civil war threatens a tense peace.

Despite his knowledge, once he’s there, MacWhite sees only a dichotomy between the U.S. and Communism.

He can’t accept that anti-American sentiment might be a longing for self-determination and nationalism.

Imagine that!

This 1963 MARLON BRANDO film ' The UGLY AMERICAN ' is an all too often overlooked effort from such a truly talented actor as was Mr. Brando. Relevant upon release 53 years ago, it is relevant today. The AIRPORT ARRIVAL scenes as Ambassador MacWhite speeds off in his 1957 Cadillac Fleetwood limousine are a CINEMATIC TRIUMPH alone ! 

-Robert D.

Over the years, the term “the ugly American” has come to describe a pompus know-it all attitude that is dismissive of others, and that basks in the tattered remains of American patriotism.

The big problem with expatriation is the IRS. If you renounce your citizenship you are treated as though you have sold all your assets at fair market value, and must pay tax accordingly. If you don’t do that, you can simply live abroad and keep your US citizenship (and hopefully your new country allows dual citizenship). You will still have to file US tax returns and pay US taxes, although you will get a credit against it for any foreign taxes paid. 

-Hapalong Cassidy

I found this review of the movie enlightening.

Viet Nam 1963

I was in Viet Nam from June 1963 to March 1964. We saw “The Ugly American” at the American movie theatre in Saigon, the Capitol Kinh Do.

There were many Americans and their dependents in Saigon and in Viet Nam at this time–most were isolated with cocktail parties, teas, and American activities. Most American children went to the American Community School outside of Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Their parents belonged to the exclusive Cercle Sportiff, hobnobbing with the Vietnamese elite who monetarily benefited from the war. There were opportunities for American civilians to teach the Vietnamese English, but I never knew of any opportunities for Americans to learn Vietnamese or national customs.

Many of the children of the diplomatic corps were instructed that if their shirt tails hung out or if they ate with their fingers when eating implements were available, they would be considered “ugly Americans.” Nothing was said about the teenage boys drinking, whoring, and racing their motorcycles through the darkened Saigon streets in the early morning hours. Nothing was said about how we knew the way to “win” the war against the popular nationalist freedom fighter known as Ho Chi Minh who organized the successful campaigns against the Japanese and French occupiers.

Perhaps if we had listened a little more, learned the language and customs, and understood that the desire for national freedom is not communism, we wouldn’t still be trying to “win” the Vietnam War.

…

I’m an American myself. So what is the deal?

Hum.

Not nearly good enough.

What is “it” with Americans?

I’m an American. So what’s the deal, eh?

Why do we want to leave the “home of the free”, and “the shining house on the hill”, where the entire world wants to move to? Are we stupid? Are we too full of ourselves?

The U.S. government doesn’t formally track how many Americans leave the U.S. but the most recent estimate puts the figure at nearly nine million. This figure represents a doubling of the 1999 figure, placed at 4.1 million. The number of expats has more than doubled in the last fifteen years — a number growing faster than the rate of the U.S. population itself.

Juan jwayne says:

I live in Nicaragua/ Costa Rica. My $ goes much farther. The people are poor but happy,happier than Americans.You must have an income, me, union pension. My Atm card works here,so no worries.Takes a lil while to get used to it, different culture, but you’re easy going about things, it’ll work out. Good Luck

So where are these American expats going? According to the Association of American Residents Overseas (AARO), US expats can be found in more than 160 countries:

• 40% opt for the Western hemisphere — Canada, Central and South America.
• 26% move to Europe.
• 14% head to East Asia and the Pacific
• 14% head to the Middle East.
• 3% travel to Central or South Asia.
• 3% choose Africa.

Apparently, the most popular countries for expats of all nations to move to are:

1. Ecuador
2. Mexico
3. Malta
4. Singapore
5. Luxembourg
6. New Zealand
7. Thailand
8. Panama
9. Canada
10. Australia

steinbergfeldwitzcohen says:
I would think that a smart guy would have learned something about the culture of THAILAND before he went there! You can go to jail for being disrespectful to their Royals. 

Never, ever show anger. 

Never: it is disrespectful and shows weakness (an inability to control emotions or to be properly afraid of those with the power of life and death, ie. 3rd world cops). 

In fact, treat every cop and govt official as a long missed uncle you deeply love and respect. If you do that you cannot lose in the game. 

You could have walked out of that station in 1 hr or less by being respectful and calm, wishing to pay while indicating a recent family hardship of a medical nature or, even better, allude to a recent family death that you had to cover the funeral costs for as you are the eldest. 

The cops and robbers would have settled for 50% and you would have left happy.

I believe that you must live life on YOUR terms…

Perhaps this Chick might give us some insight.

Amanda Machado tells her story…

After fifteen months of travel, I returned to the United States ready to give American life another try. After a few months at home with my family, I moved back to San Francisco, the city I lived and worked in before traveling. I started looking for a job, looking for apartments, looking for new friends. I felt eager to re-enter American society, and pick up somewhat where I left off.

Within four months, I had changed my mind.

After struggling with so many aspects of United States society and culture, I ended up finding a pretty great life in Cape Town, South Africa (along with a pretty great American boyfriend who had moved here years ago and found the same). I spent much of last year, hopping back and forth between the two countries, allowing me to distinctly see the differences between them. I moved here officially this past July.

A new survey shows I’m not alone: according to a TransferWise national survey of over 2000 adults, around one in three Americans say they’d consider leaving the United States for another country.

For us millennials, it’s even worse: 55% of America­ns between the ages of 18-34 say they’d consider it.

What scares me most is that I won’t be able to enjoy life as I do here if I were to move back to the United States. Though life in South Africa comes with its own unique set of struggles, my life here in many ways became far easier than what I experienced in the States.

Here’s how:

1. I don’t have to worry about getting sick.

In the Transferwise Survey, “more affordable healthcare” was the number one improvement respondents said would make living in the US more appealing.

For years, the US has had the most expensive yet least effective healthcare system in the world. The recent drug price-hike scandal reminded us that unlike Canada, Australia, and many countries in Europe, our country does not regulate drug prices in the same way we regulate other basic needs, like water and electricity. Instead, we are the only developed nation that allows drug makers to set their own prices, regardless of whether average Americans can afford it.

As a freelancer, healthcare became one of my top priorities when deciding where to live. Individual plans in New York city can go up to a grand a month. And in my homestate of Florida, the limited access to affordable women’s health needs like pap smears, yearly gynocologist visits, and affordable birth control became a large part of why I left. Planned Parenthood was few and far between in Florida, and charged comparatively high rates after losing funding from the state government. The St. Petersburg Times reported that in 2001, presidential candidate Jeb Bush cut over $300,000 for family planning services through Planned Parenthood. The result? In 2014, an evaluation of health data found that Florida was tied with Oklahoma and Arkansas for the worst state for women’s health.

2. “Work-life balance” actually seems possible.

In the Transferwise survey, “a better quality of life” was the most popular reason people chose to consider leaving the country. It was top on my list too.

I enjoy living in places that prioritize joy instead of only productivity.

But in the US, the anxieties of professional life are almost cliche: People work more and get paid less. Corporate profits increase, while incomes stay stagnant.

The New York Times has published pieces arguing that our work world is toxic and doesn’t even leave you time to be nice. We are one of only nine countries that don’t offer paid annual leave. And workers skip vacations because they’re afraid of the workload that will stack up while they’re gone, or because they fear taking vacations will make them look lazy. Meanwhile, American presidential candidates claim the problem is Americans aren’t working long and hard enough.

Living outside of the United States, I saw that this didn’t have to be the norm. Other countries are far better at making work-life balance a reality.

In South Africa, I saw people both engaging in meaningful work, and enjoying their weekends. I saw workers consider their loved ones and their overall well-being in their work decisions, without feeling guilty or selfish.

And, I’ve seen people with the most opportunity for financial gain simply choose not to capitalize on it. My boyfriend once asked the owner of a coffee shop we often visited why she closed on Saturdays and Sundays, and so early during the week. He explained to her she could make a killing with brunches on Saturday.

She shrugged her shoulders and told him she already knew that.

But she said she’d rather be with her family on Saturdays than have to worry about work. Similarly, I’ve seen some wine bars close Friday at 10pm, at the time they’d perhaps be most profitable.

I prefer this kind of prioritizing.

3. As a person of color, being an “expat” instead of a “minority” is kind of relieving.

Many articles have discussed how a person of color from the US can often receive more privileges abroad than in the United States.

In his New York Times article “The Next Great Migration” Thomas Chatterton Williams describes the story of his friend who moved from New York to London:

“He confessed, ‘The race situation back home occupies so much space in your mind, even just safety-wise, I actually never fully understood what it meant to be American, and all the advantages that come with it, until now…

You immediately remove that affirmative action target from your back. 

A work visa gives you the validation that you’re good at what you do.”

In South Africa, I’ve had similar experiences. Instead of being the “affirmative action kid” I was often labeled at college, here my achievements are never tied to my racial background. People care far more about my US college degree and work experience than how I racially identify.

And because my racial background doesn’t matter nearly as much, race no longer has to matter as much in my life.

My primary identity in South Africa is “American” in a way it never was back in the States. After years of trying to figure out my how my Latino identity fits among my life, it’s kind of relieving for once to live in a place where frankly, no one gives a shit.

4. My values as a global citizen are affirmed.

Life in the United States is generally only about the United States. This is reflected in everything from American travel habits to American media to American curriculum in schools.

But life in other countries is about the world.

For example, Business Insider ran a story that illustrated the differences between US media and media internationally. They put side-to-side the cover stories for Time magazine’s US edition versus its editions abroad.

One month, the cover in the US had the headline “Chore Wars”, while the rest of the world got “Travels Through Islam.” Another month, while the rest of the world had a front page story on rebellion in the Middle East, the US got “Why Anxiety is Good For You.”

Statistics back up this apparent lack of interest in the rest of the world: a State of the Media survey found that in 2008, news agencies in the US devoted only 10.3% to foreign coverage.

The Alarmist says:

When I was still military, in a so-called “friendly” country, one of my buddies decided our cab fare to town was too much … it was about $1 too much … BFD or Biloxi Fire Department, as we used to say … anyway, buddy decides to pay what he thinks is fair and walk away, so cabbie says, “No good… we go to police!” So buddy says, “Ok, we go to police.” I say, “You know the police beat people in this country, right?” and hand the cabbie the rest of the fare, figuring I was feeding one of his rugrats. When you are an American abroad, you have far fewer friends than you think, and they certainly don’t include the authorities … their and ours.

So I am going to kind of throw some shit to America right now…

6 Uncomfortable truths about life in the United States

Found HERE. All the normal disclaimers apply.

1. The only country that incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than the U.S. is North Korea.

The International Centre for Prison Studies estimates that we have more than 2.2 million people behind bars, or around 716 people per 100,000 citizens, which is far higher than Russia, China, and Iran. To put this in even more perspective, the number per 100,000 citizens in European countries: 78 in Germany, 103 in France, and 99 in Italy. Even worse, 60% of U.S. prisoners are non-violent offenders. The numbers demonstrate how the United States contributes a completely disproportional amount of prisoners to the global environment: we are responsible for around 22% of the total amount of inmates in the world, even though we only account for 4.4% of the world population.

2. Though we spend more money on health care than any other country in the world, our life expectancy in some areas of the South is lower than the life expectancy in Nicaragua, Algeria and Bangladesh.

Though our life expectancy overall has improved (Americans live around eight years longer now than they did in 1970), our rate of improvement is far slower than other countries, and in some counties is on-par with countries far less developed than we are. We also rank last among rich countries in overall health performance, according to a 2014 survey by the Commonwealth Fund that looked at measures like equity of care and efficiency.

This suggests that Americans overspend on technology, without achieving higher results. For example, Americans have the highest rate of MRI exams. And yet in Austria, where the MRI exam rate is around half of ours, the life expectancy is still two years longer than ours.

We also rank low among developed nations for the amount of doctors we have: only 2.5 per 1,000 people (in 2005). In most of Europe, that number is far above three. In Cuba it was 6.7 in 2010. A 2015 report suggested that by 2025 our country would need between 46,000 and 90,000 more physicians than we have today.

3. Out of all developed nations, we have the highest teen pregnancy rate.

The Guttmacher Institute found that the pregnancy rate for American girls is 57 out of every 1,000 girls, far higher than most developed countries. Many argue that this derives from the failure of our abstinence-only education programs. The majority of European countries use comprehensive sex-ed. The result? A teen pregnancy rate of 5.3 per 1,000 in the Netherlands, 4.3 per 1,000 in Switzerland and 9.8 per 1,000 in Germany.

4. Even though we account for 4.4% of the world’s population, we use 18% of the world’s energy.

And …

…one-third of the world’s paper and around a quarter of the world’s oil, coal and aluminum.

5. We are the only developed country that still executes prisoners.

111 UN member nations have expressed their agreement with a moratorium on the death penalty. And yet the US stands alone among developing countries in continuing the practice.

We can’t argue that we’ve kept the death penalty because it works: several articles have shown how capital punishment in the U.S. has been significantly racist, economically costly, and ultimately inefffective in deterring future crime.

6. We are one of only three nations in the world that does not guarantee paid maternal leave.

Though 70 percent of children live in families where both adults work, the United States still has made little effort to provide paid maternal leave for American families.

The small company we keep? Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.

A 2010 survey found that 76 of registered voters supported some form of paid leave.

Other studies also show that when maternity leaves are short and unpaid, immunization and health visit rates go down and infant mortality rates go up. An OECD study on nineteen countries from 1979 to 2003 also found that paid parental led to significantly greater productivity.

So what is the point in all of this?

Life is what you make of it.

Do not live your life in fear.

Just because you were born in the United States, and was raised as an American with all the baggage and advantages that comes with it, you can change the script.

Forest Gump says that “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get”. I argue that you can change the box.

And who cares why?

Really!

If you want to be a hedonistic slime-ball or, a forever-back-packer, or settle down with a family somewhere else. It is no one else’s business. It’s only yours.

So when I read the comments here, I see the arrogance of self-righteous American calling others out for doing things that they themselves are far too afraid to do.

It is really quite simple, really.

You migrate to where your happiness can manifest and become reality. That chick that I mentioned above was far happier in South Africa than in the States. And I am not doubting her. the things that matter to her are important. You just don’t brush them off to the side and call her a “coward” or a “traitor”. Do you?

If you are happy were you are now, then stay there.

I do miss many things about the United States, but for me personally it is literally a prison as a third-rate citizen.No matter what aspects that I miss, that I long for, and what fond memories that I have, I know that they are just that; memories.

We have to look at what is important to us all, and use faith, prayer and affirmation campaigns to make it manifest.

With a plan, backed up with action, understanding and wisdom, you will be able to manifest your desires

May your life become the source for your greatest happiness.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my index about Escape! (from America)

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All through our lives we have been told that “news” provides us with a “window to the world”, and that we need to keep abreast of the events of the day. The argument is that this is how we grow, learn and understand our place in society.

This, now more than ever, is absolutely false.

And as I have repeatedly tried to explain this to you all, you all still don’t FUCKING GET IT!

(Sorry for being so brash and in your face, but Jeeze! Louise!)

All, yes all and every, item of “news” that comes out of the United States is manipulative propaganda. That’s what it is, that’s all it is, and if you respond that you have something that you read from this alternative news source… I will have to shake my head in sadness and disbelief.

There is no longer any free, independent “news” out of the United States today. It is all a very well-honed network of manipulation and deceit.

This means ALL OF IT.

Key Points

Point One. All “news” manipulates.

If you want to get a full perspective on something then you need to get a wide selection of information from many sources. And NO I DO NOT MEAN AMERICAN SOURCES. I mean international sources.

This is key point Two.

Oh, Mr. So-and-so wrote a "well researched" book on China. Great. 

Did he write on his experiences inside of China?

No. 

Why not?

He used many well documented sources.

Well, what were his sources? 

Oh! All American publications, written in English, by people who have never been to China regurgitating what they have read.

And how is the opinion, of a person, who forms his opinions, by other opinionated people who know absolutely nothing about China going to improve your life?

It isn’t.

Instead, you should use that money and you buy a plane ticket and you look around yourself.

That’s key point Three. See what is important with your own two eyes, using your ears, on the ground and touching things with your hands. Books and periodicals and articles are so deceptive these days that they are more of a hindrance to the truth than information.

Now, the world has many many, MANY people pretending to be journalists.

Thus, you have to take each and every “report” and “news article” cautiously (in America we call this “with a grain of salt“). You can read it as most articles are really nothing more than opinions, NOT reporting, and some of those opinions have some value.

I think the most important key point is four. There is no longer any actual reporting inside of America today.

Zero.

Reporting of events in America has been replaced by carefully constructed narratives used to manipulate American citizens to follow herd behaviors.

One of the most important things that we must understand is that America has constructed the most powerful and elaborate propaganda network in history.

The American (levers of government) owns, through proxy, all of the major media, and all of the alternative media.

Yes, please read that again.

The American government owned Rush Limbaugh. The American government owns Free Republic. The American government supports GAB, the American government promotes Salon, the American government is the voice of the Huffington Post. The American government injects Zero Hedge. The American government controls the narratives on LinkedIN.

Those beloved Conservatives, and those funny progressives are all tools for the government. ALL OF THEM.

Thus key point five; actual events (and truths) are hidden from Americans.

So what is the purpose of “news” manipulation?

The actual purpose brings us to key Six. It is more than just a distraction. It’s a “snipe hunt”. The purpose of American news is to keep the American people ignorant.

It is to keep Americans away from the truths.

It is to keep Americans ignorant of the real situations.

This is because if they realized what they were, they would be extremely angry; angry to a point of killing everyone on sight in rolling fits of rage.

That’s why.

SNIPE HUNT
A snipe hunt is a type of practical joke or fool's errand, in existence in North America as early as the 1840s, in which an unsuspecting newcomer is duped into trying to catch a nonexistent animal called a snipe. Although snipe are an actual family of birds, a snipe hunt is a quest for an imaginary creature whose description varies.

-Wikipedia

Those of us “in the know” only have clarity on small tidbits of Intel. However, when we start linking up with others (such as through MM, here) who also have their information and we start putting the information together a very… very… VERY disturbing picture comes to light.

Which is point Seven. The actual reality of how Americans are, the lives they live, and the operation of the government is so far distanced from that which is promoted by the media that it resembles something completely different.

Indeed, the true reality of what America is really resembles the movie the Matrix where young Neo is exposed to the truth of what the world actually looks like.

Thus point eight. America is not a “shining city on the hill” with “democracy” and “freedom”, with a nation ruled by “justice”.

America is instead, an [1] oligarchy-owned Corporatocracy.

It is one that [2] operates as a military empire, and budgets it appropriately.

America [3] treats it’s people as disposable debit-serfs for profit, with a million tiny “hands in the wallet” with thousands (no longer hundreds) of taxes, fees, rules, and requirements that siphon money away from the citizenry in every shape, and in every form.

And America [4] engages on the international scene as a war-mongering bully, and is [5] presently a serious threat to the future of mankind.

Like a cancer the sicknesses that the leadership has permitted to grow has festered until now, the cancer has metastasized.  America has become a dangerous monster that is thrashing around angerly, and trying to maintain it’s respect, it’s authority, and it’s world position. It cannot do that, and of which, it is quite dangerous.

But we are not going to talk about that.

Instead we are going to get back to the point that American “news” is a SNIPE HUNT of misdirection to keep Americans going around and around, and around, and around in circles.

American “news” as a “snipe hunt”

To illustrate how Americans are manipulated to go after “snipes” on a “snipe hunt” we will use the 2009 movie “Push” to illustrate this point.

What is real and what is an illusion when someone else controls your eyes and your memories?

Really.

What if everything that you know is an artificial construct that you now believe and that the truth was erased and false memories were implanted in your brain? Could you tell the difference?

I argue you cannot.

And just like many Americans “had a bad experience with Huawei”, who never owned a Huawei phone…

Who swear that they are never going “to use 5G”…

And now “will not get their RNA vaccination”…

… is no different than you remembering a brother that never existed.

The movie “Push” 2009

As that was one of the scenes in this movie. I am going to use this movie as the basis of discussion on the idea that other forces are so powerful that they can change what you think, what you believe, what you remember, and thus control how you act.

This movie is sort of a “sleeper” movie about people with super-powers. But unlike that same-old nonsense about being bitten by radioactive spiders and the like, this one discusses …

… how abilities are used by very evil people.

First up. Push: Theatrical Trailer on INDB here.

These days you can't throw a half-brick in the air without it landing on someone who can fly, or was bitten by a radioactive spider (and that's assuming that the 'half-brick' in question doesn't GIVE the person it lands on the power to fly or climb walls!). 

However, back in 2009, superhero movies (or those generally showing young, good-looking people with superpowers) weren't quite always guaranteed to make as much money as today's average Marvel Cinematic Universe film. 

Therefore, 'Push' sort of flew below radar at the time. 

I'd like to say that it's achieved a 'cult following' over time and it's a bit more of a 'sleeper hit,' however, it seems to have been completely forgotten. And, in my opinion, that's a shame - I really enjoyed it!

-bowmanblue

The movie start out with a narrator describing how those with “abilities” have been involved with the US government since 1945.

These abilities are various flavors of telekinetic powers. Some can push thoughts into other people’s brains, others can see into the future, and some can kill others by thoughts alone.

Two of the people with these special “abilities” or “powers”, are known as “movers”.

Movers
Movers are powerful telekinetics who are trained to identify the specific atomic frequency of a given material and alter the gravitational field around it, usually causing the nearby air to appear warped. 

This allows them to move both animate and inanimate objects. 

Advanced Movers can work at the molecular level, creating protective force fields in the air around them or to reinforce punches and other strikes to make them stronger.

Two “Movers”, Nick Gant and his father, are on the run from the “Division”. Which is a waved, unacknowledged special access program in the United States government W(U)-SAP.

Realizing that escape is impossible, Nick’s father tells him of a vision he received from a “Watcher”.

Watchers
Watchers have the ability to foresee the future to varying degrees. 

As knowledge of the future invariably causes that future to change, Watchers' visions of the future in their direct sphere of influence are subject to frequent shifting.

This is another type of person who's telekinetic powers involve the power to see the future.

This, in this case, a girl will give him a flower and he is to do whatever she says in order to "save us all."

Nick’s father throws Nick into an air vent as Agent Henry Carver of the Division arrives. Nick sees his father get killed before escaping.

A decade later, the American Division tests an augmentation drug on a “Pusher”, named Kira.

Pushers
Pushers have the ability to implant memories, thoughts and emotions into the minds of other people in order to manipulate them. 

The skill level of the Pusher determines how many people the Pusher is able to control at one time, and how vivid the implanted memories are. 

A powerful Pusher can push a large group of people at the same time, basically creating a personal army. 

A Pusher is able to make a person do anything the Pusher desires, even commit suicide. 

A Pusher's eyes indicate how powerful they are: their pupils will dilate to certain degrees depending on how powerful the push is (for example, Henry Carver's eyes are rendered completely black, signifying that he is an extremely able and effective Pusher).

This drug either kills the host or greatly increases their powers exponentially.

The test works after many tries.

Rendering the doctor unconscious, Kira steals his security clearance card and an augmentation drug-filled syringe and escapes.

In Hong Kong, Nick (now older as a young man) is hiding from the Division as an expatriate.

He attempts to use his ability to make a living, but his poor skills at “moving” at a dice game leave him indebted to a local Triad. Which for you all who do not know, is the name of a Chinese criminal organization.

This particular Triad is controlled by “Bleeders”, bred by the now-defunct Chinese Division.

In the movie, the Chinese tried to make their own version of the American “division” but failed. The remnants were either absorbed by the American organization or went “underground” and became criminal syndicates.

Bleeder
Bleeders have the ability to emit high-pitched sonic vibrations that cause ruptures in a target's blood vessels. 

While using this ability, their eyes turn into slits because of synthetic materials implanted in them to protect the blood vessels from the effects of their own ability. 

They are also sometimes known as Joe Mama.

A young girl named Cassie Holmes arrives at Nick’s apartment.

She explains to him that she is a “Watcher”.

Watchers
Watchers have the ability to foresee the future to varying degrees. 

As knowledge of the future invariably causes that future to change, Watchers' visions of the future in their direct sphere of influence are subject to frequent shifting.

She further explains that they are going to find a case containing 6 million dollars. But shortly afterwards, they are attacked by Triad Bleeders but escape.

All of the reviews I've read of this movie have savaged it and, personally, I didn't think it was nearly bad as bad as all that. 

There were some interesting characters (the guy they enlist to help them hide themselves from the bad guys comes to mind here), and it put a new and interesting spin on the whole "people with super powers" genre. 

BUT...what really makes me love this film is the depictions of Hong Kong. 

See, I have been living in Hong Kong for almost 5 years now and I've told all my friends and family that if they want to get a good look at the many sides of the city (other than the touristy facade is typically presented), watch this movie. 

The film makers really did a great job of capturing what it's like to wander around Hong Kong, and the cinematography is like eye candy. 

-srvblooze

Problems arise.

And Nick is nearly killed by the Triads. To recover, Cassie uses the help of a “stitch” to heal him.

Stitch
Stitches are psychic surgeons trained to quickly reconstruct cells to their previous or healthy state. 

Using only their hands, they can heal and even "unheal" whatever they have done. For more detailed work, Stitches use a silver based cream on their hands which acts as a conductor for their ability.

Once healed up, Nick and Cassie go to a nightclub on a hint from Cassie’s predictions.

Nick sees an old friend, “Hook” Waters, who happens to be a “Shifter”.

Shifters
Shifters can temporarily alter the appearance of an object by manipulating the patterns of light interacting with it. 

Once the illusion is established, it remains with the object for a short period of time. 

For example, a Shifter could touch a one dollar bill and alter it to appear as a one hundred dollar bill until the effect expires. 

The object shifted must have roughly the same dimensions as the object it is shifted into. The length of time that the effect will last is based on the Shifter's experience and ability.

The shifter uses his abilities to make a replica of the clue in Cassie’s drawing and tells them to go to Emily Hu, a highly skilled “Sniffer” who can help them find Kira.

Sniffer
Sniffs are highly developed psychometrics who can track the location of people or objects over varying distances. 

Like bloodhounds, their ability is increased if they have tactile access to an object that has been in direct contact with the subject. 

Sniffs receive information in the form of images, which is why identifiable landmarks help increase their effectiveness.

Nick and Cassie find Kira, who once had a romantic relationship with Nick.

They recruit a “Shadow” named “Pinky” Stein to hide Kira from the “Sniffers”.

Shadows
Shadows are trained to block the vision of other clairvoyants such as Sniffs, making any subject within their target radius appear "dark". 

Experience will enhance the size of the area they can shadow and the intensity of their shielding effect. 

Shadows need to be awake to manifest their ability, so it is common for a detail of two Shadows to operate in shifts while protecting a person or object for extended periods. 

Most Shadows are effective only against Sniffs, but some extremely powerful Shadows are able to block even Watchers.

Cassie finds the key to a locker in which Kira hid a valuable case.

With the aid of Cassie’s visions, they piece together the events that led them to meet; Cassie’s mother used her visions to set a complex plan in motion that will destroy Division.

The plan to thwart the American Government

Nick comes up with a plan that involves seven envelopes in which he places instructions; each person in the group is entrusted with one red envelope, and none are to be opened until the right time.

Thus no one knows the content in the envelopes. That way, no one knows the plan except the person who made the envelopes.

While Kira and Pinky leave in a taxi, Nick and Cassie share a goodbye. Cassie tells him to “take an umbrella, it’s going to rain”, he replies with “you be careful too”.

Nick uses a “Wiper” to erase his memories of the plan, ensuring that Watchers from both Division and the Triads will no longer be able to interfere.

Wiper
Wipers are skilled at either temporarily or permanently erasing memory, an invaluable asset in espionage. 

Experience will dictate the accuracy of their wipes, though there is always the danger that they will eliminate a desired memory.

Hook retrieves the case (which does not have 6 million dollars, but instead has the syringe Kira stole) and brings it back to Cassie.

He shifts another case to match the case with the syringe.

Cassie takes the shifted case to Nick’s apartment and waits.

Nick regains consciousness: he has no memory of the envelopes or his plan.

He opens his envelope, which tells him to return home.

He finds the case in his room but Carver introduces himself to Kira as a friend, stating that her memories are false; she is a Division agent who volunteered to take the augmentation injection and suffered amnesia as a side-effect.

Carver shows Kira her badge.

She believes him, because (after all) her memories and all the events confirm this narrative.

Nick goes to retrieve the augmentation drug and confronts Carver and Kira.

Carver tells Kira and Nick that the relationship they believe they had never happened and a special evening together at Coney Island was a “push” memory.

Kira reveals she has been using Nick the entire time and Nick takes the three to the building which contain the lockers and the case.

They are ambushed by the Triads.

In the midst of the fight, Carver injures Nick.

Nick grabs the case and jams the syringe into his arm, which “kills” him.  This is because, after all, the injection is fatal to over 90% of the people so injected.

After the fights ends, Nick wakes up. He wasn’t killed.

Cassie appears with an umbrella and smiles at him, “I told you it was going to rain” she tells him, revealing that it was part of the plan.

Cassie retrieves the true case, revealing that Nick injected himself with soy sauce, as they planned.

Asked whether they will see Kira again, Cassie tells Nick that they will see “little miss trouble-maker soon enough”.

Flying back to America with a sleeping Agent Carver, Kira opens her purse, finding her red envelope.

She remembers Nick telling her to open it when “she started doubting the truth” and opens it.

She finds a photograph of herself and Nick, obviously in a relationship, at Coney Island and a message that says “Kill him, See you soon!”.

Kira “pushes” Carver, commanding him to put his gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

The screen fades to black, followed by the sound of a gun shot.

…

Push is also, as I said, greatly artistical. 

It has a lot of fantastic colors and utilizes lighting very well, it's set in very beautiful environments, and there are a lot of other great cinematic techniques being used. 

I especially like the choice of soundtrack in this movie. 

It reminds me a lot of the way they choose to use music in The Dark Knight. Instead of some really catchy, noticeable soundtrack there's been a very diligent work done with a subtle yet powerful soundtrack that emerges only when necessary and gives an indescribable force to the movie. 

All in all, Push is a quite non-mainstream, entertaining, good movie worth watching. 

-that-wierd-guy

Conclusion

For you to really understand what is going on in this reality, that you inhabit, you need to understand that (just like in the movie “Push”) that there are very powerful forces that want to control your mind. If they cannot have you, control you or profit from you, then they will kill you.

Just like in the movie.

They have unlimited resources, buckets of money, skilled and talented assistants, and experts in abilities equal or better than the best you can cobble together.

Just like in the movie.

They control what everyone around you does, plans, thinks, behaves and acts upon.

Just like in the movie.

And they are convinced at how everything will work out. They believe that they will be successful stamping out what tiny inconsequential opposition that still remains to their idea of a global utopia.

Just like in the movie.

But, like the movie, you need to realize that there are ways for you to counter their efforts and avoid becoming one of the mindless zombies that they control. And all of these techniques are spelled out in the movie.

For the origin of the Coronavirus, all the discussions boil down to two narratives, and only two narratives.

The Coronavirus is either a natural pandemic or a Chinese bio-weapon. Nothing else.

There is absolutely ZERO coverage on the idea that it was all part of the Donald Trump "hybrid war" against China and that John Bolton was the man in charge of the United States Bio-weapon program.

Which is amazing as that theory is the only one where ALL of the puzzle pieces come together.

Notice that the same narrative is not present in other international publications. Of those, only the ones associated with the "five eyes" intelligence organizations will have similar articles. With some "bleed over" into the EU.

We have all be preconditioned to act like Pavlov's Dog. We instinctively behave in certain ways reactively without thinking. 

All the time we believe what was taught to us as being correct. 

But that is false. Very few things that you accept as truth are really factual. They are all erroneous programming.

So you all are concerned about vaccinations. You are worried about the implications of “passports” and RNA, and unproven issues, and all this against a virus that is promoted as being nothing special nor dangerous. And I am telling you that all the “news” is bullshit. All of it.

The truth is hidden from you.

The dangers to you and your family are real, but NOT  what is being described. The American RNA vaccinations are adaptable. They have abilities to adapt to a wide spectrum of viruses and biological weapons.

…a wide spectrum of biological weapons.

And it is critical that people be vaccinated right NOW.

So please ignore all the noise. Be careful and judicious in the selection of the vaccine that you take, and realize that the West has opted for a very unlikely candidate to fight an apparently “harmless” virus.

That makes my, and all of my hidden friends*, hair stand on end.

"Hidden friends" and idiom that refers to non-public MM members who have prior experience in American Black Programs and who understandably do not want any public association with MM, but communicate with me through back channels.

I do not trust anything out of America. But that is just me.

The Sinopham vaccine is based on long-duration, tried and proven technology, but is limited to the Coronavirus.

The American vaccines seem to have a for-profit motive, does involve unproven technology, and is  adaptable (with some other injection boosters) to be able to  combat a spectrum of other viruses. All this points to the construction of a new type of vaccination market that would require boosters from everything from the common cold to smallpox.

…with some additional boosters (at a price)…

…with annual or semi-annual inoculations (also at a price)…

…can enable the human host to combat new viruses…

…that can vary from the common cold to Smallpox.

The evil American empire has some nefarious plans ahead. I do not know what they are. But I do know that discussion of this, and what the plans could be are functionally being omitted or steered away from the public dialog.

If you read about it in the “news”…

…then you are being misdirected.

Any questions, please query in the comments.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Articles & Links

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• You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
• You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
• You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
• You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Of course, I have covered the insane level of disinformation, lies, and distortions that are spewed from the American media. I have discussed why and how this has come about, and have provided  quite an excessive number of examples. But what this article is about is what is NOT being reported.

If you would tell an American that they are ignorant of the “news” they would laugh in your face. They would respond that that idea is absurd. With the millions of articles being pumped out hourly from the vast American media, in all of it’s forms, of course Americans are “well informed”.

But nope. Americans are not.

Americans are subject to a fire-hose of outright lies, intentional distortions, eye-catching gossip, nonessential tidbits, and fear mongering. It is amazing in it’s size, scope, intensity and diversity.

If you exist within the by now almost hermetically sealed-off mindscape of Western mainstream media, and if you also happen to like knowing the truth, then life must seem increasingly unfair to you—because you can’t win.

For decades now the modus operandi has been as follows. Regardless of which party has the majority in Congress or controls the presidency, the same unchanging national (and increasingly transnational) elite ensconced in Washington sets the agenda and pushes it through using any means necessary, whether legal, illegal or blatantly criminal (increasingly the latter as national bankruptcy looms and desperation sets in).

Their operatives make sure that there is no real investigation of what happened. All Western media reports that contradict the official mendacious narrative are quashed. Any independent efforts to investigate and to find out the truth are denigrated as “conspiracy theories”—a derogatory term coined by the CIA for exactly this purpose.

Any non-Western media sources that dare to contradict the official mendacious narrative are ignored, subjected to ad hominem attacks and all manner of false allegations and, if all else fails, banned outright (as is currently happening with the satellite TV channel Russia Today).

But do not be under the impression and “real and actual news” is somehow caught up in this flood of articles. The good stuff are all culled away before Americans ever get near the truth. Americans never see the REAL news.

Some recent examples of “withheld news” include…

• The use of drones to spray swine flu over Chinese pig farms.
• The content of John Bolton’s meetings when he was the head of the American military bio-weapons office.
• The Chinese complaint about American involvement of COVID-19 to the UN.

And those are just right at the top of my head.

If you read foreign news, you will be well aware of these events, but Americans… nope. they would rather read other things.

• REPORT: Trump Telling People He’ll Be Reinstated as President in August…
• C. hotel up for sale — again…
• Don Jr. selling videos on CAMEO for $599…
• MAGA STILL THRIVES…
• Overconfident of spotting fake news? If so, you may be more likely to fall victim…
• Neighbors Fear Bear-Themed Compound Will Be Next Ruby Ridge…
• SNAP: Barbershop owner accused of killing customer who refused to pay…
• ‘Disgruntled’ firefighter kills co-worker, sets property alight and kills himself…
• Once Tech’s Golden Child, APPLE Loses Luster as Scrutiny Grows…
• AMAZON Faced 75,000 Arbitration Demands. Now It Says: Fine, Sue Us…
• Customers have 1 week to opt out of mass wireless sharing…
• WASHPOST: Workers suffer serious injuries; ‘Productivity pressure’…

Pretty pathetic, I’ll tell you what.

This particular article is going to concentrate on the public messages that both Putin and Xi Peng have been making to the United States. They are not being (accurately) reported at all.

Any reports are of the content style of “Foreign clownish national leader says something insulting to America. They are just jealous.” And the same yada, yada, yada that you can expect from the Alt-Right and the American mainstream press.

If we swallow the official lies we are being told, knowing full well that they are lies, then we feel like fools. 

If we refuse to swallow them, then we either have to accept some alternative interpretation...

... or narrative as real in spite of lacking all the facts we need to prove the case...

...because nobody is going to give them to us—and risk ostracism and marginalization...

... or we have to take an agnostic stance and declare that while we are not privy to the truth.

We know enough to declare that the official story is a tissue of lies. 

The first two of these are both clearly losing moves while the last is a refusal to play and therefore a forfeit; thus, all three are defeats.

There are no winning moves here.

But it’s even worse than that; not only do we lack a winning strategy, but we also happen to be on a losing team that doesn’t know how to play and loves to be played.

If Americans would read what I am presenting here, maybe they would start placing calls to their Congressmen representatives urging them to tone-down the belligerent aggressive war-drums.

Ai.

Take the example of the ill-fated US invasion of Iraq: 4,801 servicemen dead, 1,455,590 dead Iraqis, a once prosperous country destroyed and turned into a terrorist playground with a weak central government that is aligned with Iran, buying weapons from Russia and increasingly hostile toward the US.

The war was sold to the public in the US using a technique called “proof by juxtaposition” which works like this: keep showing a picture of Bob next to a giant pile of corpses and eventually everyone comes to believe that Bob is a mass murderer, never mind the fact that Bob only killed maybe half a dozen people, and all but one in self-defense or by accident.

This is what was done with Saddam Hussein (who, by the way, was Osama bin Laden’s arch-enemy, who, in turn, had worked for the CIA). By 2003 70% of Americans had been made to believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center.

“Proof by juxtaposition” works well for the TV-addled zombies in the US, but for the rest of the world, as represented by the UN Security Council, a stronger tissue of lies had to be woven—using forged “intelligence” of Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction.” The world blinked and either voted for or failed to veto the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq.

The putative weapons were never found and the intelligence that was used to convince the world of their existence turned out to have been fabricated.

But since the American people (the “sheeple”) are so dumbed down and are unaware of what is going on, no one is sending up messages to Washington, and so they all believe what they want to believe.

“Foreign clownish national leader says something insulting to America. They are just jealous.”

First up is an article about what Putin had to say to America and it’s “allies”…

Putin to Western Elites: Playtime is Over

An excellent blogger about Russia distills Putin’s Sochi speech into 10 simple points

Dmitry Orlov Thu, Mar 17 2016 .A longer version of this article originally appeared at the ClubOrlov blog. All credit to the author.

Most people in the English-speaking parts of the world missed Putin’s speech at the Valdai conference in Sochi a few years ago, and, chances are, those who have heard of the speech didn’t get a chance to read it, and missed its importance.

Western media did their best to ignore it or to twist its meaning. Regardless of what you think or don’t think of Putin (like the sun and the moon, he does not exist for you to cultivate an opinion) this is probably the most important political speech since Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech of March 5, 1946.

In this speech, Putin abruptly changed the rules of the game. Previously, the game of international politics was played as follows: politicians made public pronouncements, for the sake of maintaining a pleasant fiction of national sovereignty, but they were strictly for show and had nothing to do with the substance of international politics; in the meantime, they engaged in secret back-room negotiations, in which the actual deals were hammered out.

Previously, Putin tried to play this game, expecting only that Russia be treated as an equal. But these hopes have been dashed, and at this conference he declared the game to be over, explicitly violating Western taboo by speaking directly to the people over the heads of elite clans and political leaders.

Here’s what he said…

1. The games are OVER.

Russia will no longer play games and engage in back-room negotiations over trifles. But Russia is prepared for serious conversations and agreements, if these are conducive to collective security, are based on fairness and take into account the interests of each side.

2. America cannot guarantee anything. 

All systems of global collective security now lie in ruins. There are no longer any international security guarantees at all. And the entity that destroyed them has a name: The United States of America.

3. There is no New World Order as envisioned by America.

The builders of the New World Order have failed, having built a sand castle. Whether or not a new world order of any sort is to be built is not just Russia's decision, but it is a decision that will not be made without Russia.

The UN failed.

The NWO failed.

And so America launched the “Rules Based Order”, and it is…

…failing.

4. Russia prefers cautious and careful diplomacy.

Russia favors a conservative approach to introducing innovations into the social order, but is not opposed to investigating and discussing such innovations, to see if introducing any of them might be justified.

5. Russia will not play any games that America has created.

Russia has no intention of going fishing in the murky waters created by America's ever-expanding “empire of chaos,” and has no interest in building a new empire of her own (this is unnecessary; Russia's challenges lie in developing her already vast territory). Neither is Russia willing to act as a savior of the world, as she had in the past.

6. Russia does not want to lead the world.

Russia will not attempt to reformat the world in her own image, but neither will she allow anyone to reformat her in their image. Russia will not close herself off from the world, but anyone who tries to close her off from the world will be sure to reap a whirlwind.

And neither does China.

Which, of course, runs contrary to the K-street narrative out of Washington DC.

7. Russia does not want war, but sees America eyeing it as the next world war.

Russia does not wish for the chaos to spread, does not want war, and has no intention of starting one. However, today Russia sees the outbreak of global war as almost inevitable, is prepared for it, and is continuing to prepare for it. Russia does not war—nor does she fear it.

8. Russia will not interfere in the goals and objectives of other nations, just leave it alone.

Russia does not intend to take an active role in thwarting those who are still attempting to construct their New World Order—until their efforts start to impinge on Russia's key interests. Russia would prefer to stand by and watch them give themselves as many lumps as their poor heads can take. But those who manage to drag Russia into this process, through disregard for her interests, will be taught the true meaning of pain.

This is what China is doing as well. It’s a big night and day comparison to what the Untied Sates and it’s “allies” are doing.

9. Russia is about Russians. Nothing else.

In her external, and, even more so, internal politics, Russia's power will rely not on the elites and their back-room dealing, but on the will of the people.

Yes., And China is for the Chinese.

To these nine points I would like to add a tenth:

10. There can be no unilateral action.

There is still a chance to construct a new world order that will avoid a world war. This new world order must of necessity include the United States—but can only do so on the same terms as everyone else: subject to international law and international agreements; refraining from all unilateral action; in full respect of the sovereignty of other nations.

To sum it all up: play-time is over. Children, put away your toys. Now is the time for the adults to make decisions. Russia is ready for this; is the world?

But Americans just don’t “get it”

They are living in some kind of stupid haze, or just morons, or perhaps they have never seen the pain and suffering and despair that war brings. Maybe they view war as something that is done far away and that doesn’t affect them. they don’t see that when Putin and Xi Peng are making these statements that they are not talking about Russians and Chinese dying. They are talking about American dying in mass.

They just don’t “get it”.

So here is another article. This one is about the absolute frustration that Putin has with the fucking morons that run the West.

Putin LOSES IT, Warns Journalists of War: ‘I Don’t Know How to Get Through to You People’

‘How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction?’

Enrico Braun Wed, Jul 6 2016 | 320 words 238,361 Comments This post first appeared on Russia Insider.

Vladimir Putin has finally taken the kid gloves off.

The Russian president was meeting with foreign journalists at the conclusion of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 17th, 2016 when he left no one in any doubt that the world is headed down a course which could lead to nuclear war.

This was in 2016, right before Trump was elected President of the United States.

Putin railed against the journalists for their “tall tales” in blindly repeating lies and misinformation provided to them by the United States on its anti-ballistic missile systems being constructed in Eastern Europe. He pointed out that since the Iran nuclear deal, the claim the system is to protect against Iranian missiles has been exposed as a lie.

The journalists were informed that within a few years, Russia predicted the US would be able to extend the range of the system to 1000 km. At that point, Russia’s nuclear potential, and thus the nuclear balance between the US and Russia, would be placed in jeopardy.

Putin completely lost patience with the journalists, berating them for lazily helping to accelerate a nuclear confrontation by repeating US propaganda.

He virtually pleaded with the western media, for the sake of the world, to change their line:

We know year by year what's going to happen, and they know that we know. It's only you that they tell tall tales to, and you buy it, and spread it to the citizens of your countries. 

You people in turn do not feel a sense of the impending danger - this is what worries me. 

How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? 

While they pretend that nothing is going on. 

I don't know how to get through to you anymore.

Does anyone in the reeking garbage heap that is the Western mainstream western media have a conscience? Do they even have enough intellect to get what Putin is saying – that they are helping to push the planet towards World War III?

That all was five years ago.

What about today?

Quite a bit has happened since Putin laid the line down with the West, and they repeatedly ignored his warnings. But you see trump started to focus on China instead, and that gave Russia a “breather” .

Of course the world has been turned upside down and no there is not a person alive who thinks that 2016 was an unstable time compared to the Biden / Trump years.

What has happened since then is a sequence of war events that were not reported in the Western press. And taken as a whole we can easily see what actually has transpired. And knowing this, and the results of the March 2021 Anchorage Alaska meeting, we know that after that meeting a significant shift occurred in Geo-political relations.

• America told the world to accept it as their overlord or expect to be destroyed.
• Russia, China and Iran formed a massive joint defense and economic block. Then laid out precise lines; “Red Lines” that will trigger World War III.

And sure, most certainly, the ambassadors have been quite clear on this.

And while I can well relate the various warnings over and over, and over to the moronic idiots who run Washington DC, let’s just keep things simple.

The stage has been set. Both China, and Russia are not going to pretend that America (and it’s cronies) are anything other than despotic-ruled military empire desirous of world conquest, and they WILL retaliate against the United States in a very substantive and spectacular way.

You all might as well ignore the “news”. None of this is being reported, and if you rely on the “news” for Intel, one day you will wake up in a reality that might not be to your liking.

No one is buying the mainstream media, or the same-old dialog any longer. It’s a new day. it’s a new beginning, and the old is sinking into the waters aflame. The only ones unable to see this are the rats scrambling on the deck of the collapsing ship.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Articles & Links

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• You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
• You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
• You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
• You can find out more about the author HERE.
• If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
• If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

Well China has unveiled a new operating system, and it is a BIG DEAL. And I am going to tell you why.

Why this is a big deal.

Presently America controls 99% of all operating systems in the world. America controls the vast number of computer operating systems (Microsoft, and Apple), and the vast number of cell phone operating systems (Microsoft, Google, and Android). The few remaining systems such and Linux and other odd-balls are hit and miss in regards to this control.

Now, I am not talking about American companies being in control of these operating systems.

Instead, I am discussing the American government controlling the operating systems themselves.

It is no secret that the United States government has offices in the development offices of Microsoft, Apple, and Google. And it is more than just “back doors” to operation access.

To use any of these systems is to give the United States absolute control over your electronics,

As I can PERSONALLY affirm when the government burst into my home in 2006, seized my computer, plugged it into a machine and had full access effectively bypassing all of my passwords, biomedical fingerprint scanning mechanisms and folder locks. They (passwords, biometrics, etc.) are there to give you the illusion of security. The fact is, the US Government owns your computer and they can access it at will.

They can do it at any time. At any place, and there isn’t a fucking thing that you can do about it.

Enter China

This situation, where America has it’s fingers and hands on all communication and electronic communication, is dangerous. Not just for you as an individual who no longer has privacy in any form, but for governments who are exposed to electronic blackmail at the touch of a button.

Which pretty much explains the Morrison government in Australia.

Whether this is economic, such as what the Trump Administration was trying to do with Huawei, or domestically, such as the control of dams, pipelines, and military, the risk of a malevolent foreign actor… especially an out of control military empire such as the United States to have this ability is very, very dangerous.

And now China has it’s own OS.

And the entire “ballgame” has changed.

America must stop this from happening!

Thus we have an on-going war with everything Huawei.

After four years of anti-China disinformation, and anti-Huawei disinformation, most Americans will regurgitate the propaganda that they have been programmed.

All the sheeple feel “bad” about Huawei and have “bad experiences”. Not that they have any experiences, mind you, but they just regurgitate the narratives. And it’s like listening to a robot. Seriously.

I met a fellow who was like this just last week. We were in a Shaomi store, and we started chatting. He said that he didn’t like Huawei products. And so I naturally asked him why.

He said that he had a “bad experience” with it.

So, I wanted to know. What was it? Was it breaking down? Was it too expensive, did it remind him of a bad girl friend? What? Was he swindled? Did the screen fall off? Were there connection problems? What was it?

I asked him over and over.

All he would say for the umpteen time was that he had a “bad experience”. I was just about to give up when he admitted that he never really and actually owned a Huawei phone. It’s just that he read a lot of bad stuff about it.

Sheeple.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Harmony OS

After years of speculation and rumor, Chinese tech giant Huawei formally unveiled its Harmony OS operating system in 2019. It’s fair to say that more questions have been raised than answered. How does it work? What problems does it solve? And is it a product of the current feud between Huawei and the U.S. government?

Is Harmony OS Based on Linux?

No. Although both are free software products (or, more accurately, Huawei has pledged to release Harmony OS with an open-source license), Harmony OS is its own distinct product.  Moreover, it uses a different design architecture to Linux, preferring a microkernel design over monolithic kernel.

But wait. Microkernel? Monolithic kernel? I’ve lost you.

Let’s try again. At the heart of every operating system is something called a kernel. Like the name implies, kernels are at the heart of every operating system, effectively serving as a foundation. They handle interactions with the underlying hardware, allocate resources, and define how programs are executed and operated.

All kernels have these fundamental responsibilities. However, they differ in how they work.

Let’s talk about memory. Modern operating systems try to segregate user applications (like Steam or Google Chrome) from the more sensitive parts of the operating system. Imagine an impenetrable line dividing the memory used by system-level services from your applications. There are two main good reasons for this: security and stability.

Microkernels, like the one used by Harmony OS, are extremely discerning about what runs in kernel mode, effectively limiting it to the basics.

Bluntly, monolithic kernels aren’t discerning. Linux, for example, allows many OS-level utilities and processes to run within this privileged space in memory.

At the time Linus Torvalds started work on the Linux kernel, microkernels were still something of an unknown quantity, with few real-world commercial uses. Microkernels also proved harder to develop, and tended to be slower.

Nearly 30 years later, things have changed. Computers are faster and cheaper. Microkernels have made the leap from academia into production.

The XNU kernel, which sits at the heart of macOS and iOS, lends much inspiration from earlier microkernel designs, namely the Mach kernel developed by Carnegie Mellon University. Meanwhile QNX, which forms the basis of the Blackberry 10 operating system, as well as many vehicular infotainment systems, uses a microkernel design.

It’s All About the Extensibility, Man

Because Microkernel designs are intentionally limited, they’re easy to extend. Adding a new system service, like a device driver, doesn’t require the developer to fundamentally alter or interfere with the kernel.

And that hints towards why Huawei chose this approach with Harmony OS. Although Huawei is perhaps best known for its phones, it’s a company involved in most sectors of the consumer technology market. Its lineup includes things like fitness wearables, routers, and televisions.

And let’s not even get into AI, robotics, infrastructure such as roads, trains and intelligent mining and farming initiatives.

And Huawei is an incredibly ambitious company. Taking a leaf from rival Xiaomi’s book, the firm has started selling IoT products through its youth-focused subsidiary Honor, including intelligent toothbrushes and smart desk lamps.

And while it’s not clear whether Harmony OS will run on every bit of consumer technology it ultimately sells, Huawei aspires to have an operating system that will run on as many devices as possible.

Part of the reason is compatibility. If you disregard hardware requirements, any application written for Harmony OS should work on any device running it. That’s an attractive proposition for developers. But it should also have benefits for consumers, too. As more and more devices become computerized, it makes sense for them to be able to easily work as part of a broader ecosystem.

But What About Phones?

It’s been nearly three years since the Trump administration’s Treasury Department placed Huawei on an “entity list,” thereby preventing American firms from trading with the company. While this has exerted pressure on all levels of Huawei’s business, the biggest pain has been felt in the company’s mobile division, preventing it from releasing new devices with Google Mobile Services (GMS) included.

Google Mobile Services is effectively the entire Google ecosystem for Android, including mundane apps like Google Maps and Gmail, as well as the Google Play Store. With Huawei’s latest phones lacking access to most apps, many have wondered whether the Chinese giant will abandon Android, instead moving to a homegrown operating system.

This seems unlikely. At least, in the short term.

For starters, Huawei’s leadership has reiterated its commitment to the Android platform. Instead, it’s focused on developing its own alternative to GMS called Huawei Mobile Services (HMS).

At the heart of this is the company’s app ecosystem, the Huawei AppGallery. Huawei states it’s spending $1 billion to close the “app gap” with the Google Play Store and has 3,000 software engineers working on it.

A new mobile operating system would be forced to start from scratch. Huawei would have to attract developers to port or redevelop their apps for Harmony OS. And, as we’ve learned from Windows Mobile, BlackBerry 10, and Samsung’s Tizen (and previously Bada), that’s not an easy proposition.

That said, Huawei is one of the most well-resourced tech firms in the world. And thus, it would be unwise to completely dismiss the prospect of a Harmony OS-powered phone.

Made in China 2025

There’s an interesting political angle to discuss here. For decades, China has acted as the world’s factory, building products designed overseas. But in recent years, China’s government and its own private sector has invested heavily in research and development. Increasingly, Chinese-designed products are making their way onto the international stage, offering new competition for Silicon Valley’s tech elite.

Amidst this, the Beijing government has an ambition it calls “Made in China 2025.” Effectively, it wants to end its reliance on imported high-tech products, such as semiconductors and airplanes, replacing them with their own homegrown alternatives. The motivation from this stems from economic and political security, as well as national prestige.

Harmony OS fits into this ambition perfectly. If it takes off, it’ll be the first globally successful operating system to emerge from China—with the exception of those used in niche markets, like cellular base stations. These homegrown credentials will come in particularly handy should the cold war between China and the United States continue to rage.

And as a result, I wouldn’t be surprised for Harmony OS to have some very enthusiastic supporters in the central government, as well as within the wider Chinese private sector. And it’s these supporters who will ultimately determine its success.

China Manufactures hardware for the world

99% of all hardware is made in China. What happens when China decides not to preload Windows 10, Apple OS, or Linux and only allows Harmony OS installed?

• Huawei to replaceWindows 10 with HarmonyOS 2.0 in its PCs

Sure you can write over the OS when you get the hardware. And that is probably what will happen. Certainly in the USA, American will be FORCED to use American OS.

It will begin as coercion. Where Americans will be warned about the dangers of Harmony OS.

Then it will be mandated by law.

Americans will be FORCED to use American computer operating systems. Just like they are forced to do other things, like pay taxes, buy health insurance, register guns, show identification to buy alcohol, and buy car insurance, etc.

Americans will be forced to use systems to allow their monitoring by the US government.

But that’s not the real concern. Actually. Americans lost their freedoms back hundreds of years ago.

What the real concern is that Microsoft will lose it’s substantial market share, as will google, and Apple. And without this dominance int he market will come a slowly eroding Intel collection ability for the American government.

And the folk at Langley are all in arms about it.

Conclusion

The United States dominance on access to privacy, control of information, control of the media, and manipulation of thought are all being challenged by China. And the oligarchy inside of Washington DC do not like this one single bit.

They are flooding the media with warnings, fears and hype and doing everything within their power to assure complete dominance in the intelligence, and communication technologies.

The sheeple believe this.

That is because they have nothing else to compare it against. So they believe the one thousandth article on why Huawei is dangerous and how China is stealing from YOU!

Do not believe it.

If you all could only see things from my point of view, from me…

…standing outside…

…and looking in at the absolutely insanity inside of America today, you too would see what is going on and why.

And a nice little video that I took. I want all you you readers in MM land to start seeing what it is like living outside of America. So that you can see how God-awful America has become. You can watch it HERE. 180MB.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

.

Articles & Links

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• You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
• You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
• You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
• You can find out more about the author HERE.
• If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
• If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

Can you believe that the morons in the American “news” media, the assholes in Washington DC, and the “talking heads” all still refer to America as a “democracy”. Really! Seriously!

It’s a De Facto Military Empire.

It’s the largest Military Empire in history. And it lives for war. The vast budget of America is devoted to…

…wait for it…

…war!

Ah…

Which goes to show you just how stupid and idiotic America is today. It’s no longer a matter of being delusional. It’s a matter of pure and utter insanity and stupidity.

The American government would look quite different if it was focused on serving the needs of it’s people. It would look something like this…

But you know, people are slowly waking up. It only took them all until the nation is teetering at the edge of the cliff to notice, but well, better late than never. Don’t you know.

I initially found this on MoA in the comment section. It’s pretty good and I expounded upon it. It was originally found on Zero Hedge alongside the rest of the COVID nonsense that is day-to-day fodder in the “alternative” media.

Ah. You know what I am talking about; that Coronavius is just an excuse for more government powers.

Yup. It’s a comfortable narrative.

Far easier to digest than the truth; that the Coronavirus was a part of a multi-stage bio-weapons attack against China on CNY that went “tits up”.

go tits up

[1] rude slang To break or malfunction; to die, fall apart, or cease to work. (A play on the phrase "go belly up." "Tits up" is sometimes hyphenated.)

[2] rude slang By extension, to have a poor, undesired, or ruinous outcome; to fail completely or not come together at all.

Never the less, the obvious points that he had made are worthy of consideration, and at that, I have expounded upon that comment and added my very own “two cents”.

Here are Ten Things We Have Learned …. about American (and United States) government, democracy and the superiority of “the American way of life”, “freedom” and “liberty”…

1. The American political system is hopelessly corrupt.

It is irredeemably corrupt. Virtually all politicians are hopelessly corrupt. No political party can be trusted. They all can be, and have been, bought. They serve themselves, pretend to work in the interests of the nation while all the time acting as the "bag men" for the oligarchy.

2. Democracy is a sham.

It has been a sham for a very long time. 

There will never be any real democracy when money and power amount to the same thing. 

The Founding Fathers who wrote the Federalist Papers were absolutely correct. A Republic tends to turn into a Democracy. A Democracy tends to turn into an Oligarchy, and an Oligarchy tends to devolve into a Military Empire if left unchecked.

America is an oligarchy ruled military empire. It hasn't been a democracy for centuries.

3. The system will stop at nothing to hold on to its power and, if possible, increase its levels of control and exploitation.

It has no scruples. No lie is too outrageous, no hypocrisy too nauseating, no human sacrifice too great. 

Those in power are psychopaths, surrounded by psychopathic toadies, and empowered by a corrupt well-established "good old boys" network.

4. So-called radical movements are usually nothing of the sort.

From whatever direction they claim to attack the system, they are just pretending to do so.

These "radical movements" are just useful tools of the oligarchy, and serve to channel discontent in directions which are harmless to the power clique and even useful to its agendas.

5. Any “dissident” voice you have ever heard of through corporate media is probably a fake.

The system does not hand out free publicity to its actual enemies. 

The entire media machine is owned, run, funded (either directly or indirectly) by the government, or it's controlling interests; the oligarchy. 

Real and actually dissident voices are silenced through technological means, or barring that, killed outright.

6. Most people in our society are cowards.

They will jettison all the fine values and principles which they have been loudly boasting about all their lives merely to avoid the slightest chance of public criticism, inconvenience or even minor financial loss. 

Additionally, most American people have a price, and they will sell their soul, their businesses, their families and their futures for financial gain.

7. The mainstream media is nothing but a propaganda machine for the system…

...and those journalists who work for it have sold their sorry souls, placing their (often minimal) writing skills entirely at the disposition of Power.

There are no longer any true dissident voices, or real journalism. 

Those that try to practice it must rely on social networks to get their messages heard, and the government, in one way or the other, controls all social media.

8. Police are not servants of the public…

...but servants of a powerful and extremely wealthy minority which seeks to control and exploit the public for its own narrow and greedy interests.

9. Scientists cannot be trusted.

They will use the hypnotic power of their white coats and authoritative status for the benefit of whoever funds their work and lifestyle. 

He who pays the piper calls the tune. And they all live for government funding. Either direct, or though an NGO that is supervised through the government.

10. Progress is a misleading illusion.

The “progress” of increasing automation and industrialization does not go hand in hand with a progress in the quality of human life.

Rather, it is becoming increasingly evident, that it will tend to “progressively” reduce it to the point of complete extinction unless managed expertly and adroitly.

So… is “black”, actually “white”?

There is a percentage of the population in America that is waking up to the fact that the American government is corrupt. That it controls all media, not just the mainstream media, and that “alternative” media outlets are all corrupted. And the beloved alternatives are now, themselves part of the government narrative.

To check who is who…

See which of your favorite “alternative media” sources are parroting the government line. Let’s use this one; “China is the source of Coronavirus, and they are covering it up.”

Any “alternative media” that repeats some form of this narrative, is a de facto arm of the American government.

When they should really be talking about how neocon John Bolton (psychopathic neocon) was put in charge of the bio-weapons office in 2017.

When anyone is talking about Coronavirus being a bio-weapon but omits this most critical piece of information should tell you reams about what your source of information is. That’s like buying a new automobile without wheels, an engine, and a steering wheel.

If you cannot see that your beloved “alternative media” are simply parroting one of three key media talking directions, then you too… must be… a sheeple.

And while I am at it…

How all that “dangers of 5G” working out now?

Why, all the news articles about it all suddenly came to an end when American companies were able to compete against the Chinese lead in 5G technology. Imagine that! What a coincidence!

Who was promoting the “don’t use 5G” narrative?

• Rush Limbaugh
• Hall Turner
• FOX News

The ones who promoted the government narrative, are themselves agents of the government.

Remember, boys and girls, your most beloved “alternative media” are just mouthpieces of the government. That way they control your actions and your behaviors by controlling your favorite news outlets. They construct one of three narratives and you end up following the narrative that appeals to what you want to believe.

Meanwhile, what is actually going on is hidden from sight.

Alt-Right

“It’s the evil Chinese. They mishandled a bio-weapon that they stole and are covering it up.”

Mainstream

“Everything is just fine, and America will recover soon.”

Alt-Left

“Don’t be afraid. Everything is under control and the Coronavirus is being tracked.”

Conclusion

I need a beer.

Is there any American out there in MM land that disagrees with this appraisal? If so, I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter. Personally, I found it “on point” and accurate. But then again, I have a “bone to pick” with the USA, so I am biased.

And with that in mind, let me close with a short video that I made of my life here in China. It’s all of a few minutes long and worth the while for you all to have some perspective what things are like…

…for me on the outside looking into the house of madness that the USA is today. The video is HERE. 150MB.

To understand what is going on inside of the forest, you need to step out of it, climb a nearby hill and look at the bigger picture. There, from that vantage point, you will be able to see a much clearer and bigger picture of what is going on.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

.

Articles & Links

.

• You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
• You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
• You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
• You can find out more about the author HERE.
• If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
• If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

There was a song that I used to listen to by Triumph called “It’s Just a Game”. Their theme, at the time, was that life was just one game after the other. Ah. It was a nice theme, but you know, maybe they were right? Humans follow the rules of society, and when you have rules, you are actually playing a game.

Such as described in a particular song “Lay it on the line” where they decry the apparent game-play in relationships. It’s all just a game. Work. Relationships. Career. Family.

It’s all just a game.

And sure things have changed since the late 1970’s when I listened to this music and used the album covers to clean my nickel bags of twigs and seeds. And when I would have parties at my parent’s house with beer, whiskey, and (then illegal) marijuana.

But just because you are not wearing earth shoes, elephant bell-bottom trousers, and a fringe leather vest, doesn’t mean that the ideas and concepts of that time …

…”me and my arrow“, Bread’s “Guitar Man”, “The Peter Principle“, “The Last Whole Earth Catalog“, and 80 cent medium pizzas…

…were just short-lived conceptional fads. Perhaps what we thought at that time was actually correct. Maybe life was actually a game.

And whether you were downing Rolling Rock beer, or Coors, or an imported Beck’s beer you were too distracted to take note on the “rules of the game”. You just accepted your role. Whether it was a pawn, a rook, or a knight.

And maybe…

…just maybe…

…we all have been taking it far too seriously.

And thus, maybe we should sit back, and stop being so anal about life. So what if you want to drive home and have lunch with your family during lunch break? So what if you want to go have a smoke outside? So what if you need to stretch your legs and walk around the building to give yourself a chance to think. So what if you want to have a icy cold beer at lunch with your hamburger?

What?

Burger King does not sell beer!

My goodness!

Well they do in England. For goodness sakes!

Imagine that! Well, why not get a bottle from the quickie-mart, get some takeout burgers and drink the beer, eat the burger in a park?

That’s always a good idea. I used to do that. I would hop in my car, go through the drive through and order a combo meal, and then drive to a shady glade and sit there listening to El’ Rush Bo. I wouldn’t dare buy a beer. That would have gotten me fired. Not that they needed the excuse, mind you. In those days, they treated employees like toilet paper. Use and discard. Use and discard. Use and discard. There was always plenty more where they came from.

Of course, I do not advise sitting in the car listening to Rush Limbaugh right now. Since, he’s dead, and the narrative is still the alt-right US government propaganda. They are still following the script, set forth by John Bolton back in 2016, and drinking coke-cola daily is not good for you, and it’s lonely to boot.

But heck…

Go ahead, get a taco salad, and get a beer from the quickie mart, and go to a park.

What?

No park?

Well, how about driving your car to the never-visited cemetery at the end of the lane. Pulling over and either sitting in your car under the shade of a mighty oak tree, or getting out and enjoying the beer on a granite tombstone?

What?

The grounds-keeper might call the police for observing your flagrant display of enjoying lunch with a beer in a quiet park setting!

Sacrilege!

Like I am saying. We are playing the game too seriously, and we are way too caught up in it.

If you are a corporate drone, and you sit back. Watch how you are participating inside a big elaborate game. And …

… no one can win the game…

…you can only play.

Thus the song from Triumph called “It’s Just a Game“.

It's just a game, you're in it all the way
It's just a game, don't let yourself slip away
It's such a shame, I heard somebody say
It's just a game, and all I can do...is play

And it is a game.

And the rules of the game are constantly changing, and we are all adapting to the changing rules instead of defining our own rules.

Did you realize that they made a female version of Sherlock Holmes? Yup. I am not shitting you. It’s a bonafied version of Sherlock Holmes with his sister taking all the credit. Jeeze! It’s called Enola Holmes (2020).

When Enola Holmes-Sherlock's teen sister-discovers her mother missing, she sets off to find her, becoming a super-sleuth in her own right as she outwits her famous brother and unravels a dangerous conspiracy around a mysterious young Lord.

It’s all just a game.

Don’t get too caught up in it.

I dug up this interesting article on Strategic Culture, and it’s worth a study. Now, before we get into the subject matter too deeply, let’s consider life as a human has evolved (devolved?) into some kind of game with rules. All of which were created by other humans a long, long time ago. And we are all stuck “playing the game”, when we really don’t have to…

The Curse of Game Theory: Why It’s in Your Self-Interest to Exit the Rules of the Game

Game theory, the mathematical theory of games of strategy, was developed by John von Neumann. It was created in several successive stages from 1928 and into 1940-41. It was published in his book “Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour” which he co-authored with Oskar Morgenstern.

The crux of the theory is that an individuals’ behavior will always be motivated towards achieving an optimal outcome, which is determined by self-interest.

An assumption made is that the players in such a game are rational, which translates to, “will strive to maximize their payoffs in the game”.

In other words, it is assumed they are motivated by selfish self-interests.

Over the years, other contributors such as John Nash (Nash equilibrium) and John Maynard Smith (evolutionary stable strategy) have added to the theory.

Today,  we are now at a point where it is considered by many to be an essential tool when modelling economic, political, sociological or military behaviors and outcomes.

As such, it is taught as such in many prestigious universities as something pretty much set in stone.

But what if we have made a terrible mistake?

After all, it is acknowledged by the theorists themselves that the entire functioning of their model relies upon the assumption that we are governed by rational selfish behavior.

People feel confident about this assumption since reality has apparently confirmed this fact to them.

But what if this game is not objectively mirroring a truthful depiction of us?

What if this game has rather, been used as a conditioning tool, a self-fulfilling prophecy, a positive feedback loop?

How can we know what is true?

How can we know what kind of a person we truly are and not what we have been conditioned to think of ourselves as?

Theory of Games and Economic Behavior

Before we can answer such a question, we need to look at the forms of simplification and assumptions that were used.

This may be counter-intuitive to some, but the “philosophy” or “hypothesis” must always precede the actual model.

The [1] variables you choose to use, [2] the variables you discount for, [3] how you define the variables, [4] how you define the relationship between the variables are not being defined by the model, but rather the creator of the model.

Once the model is created it can now, theoretically, add to that beginning structure and mimic a simplified version of reality.

However, we should keep in mind that a model that has been created on a false hypothesis could still “function.”

That is, of course, if the variables are not too much in contradiction to the other variables’ operations.

Such a model is not “aware” that it is not a representation of “reality,” and cannot indicate so to its creator.

Thus, a model can be a representation of a simplified reality or it can represent a completely artificial reality.

The Disclaimers

At the beginning of von Neumann’s book, he goes through several disclaimers which are highly problematic towards the relevance of his theory.

One of them being the acknowledgement that “there exists, at present, no satisfactory treatment of the question of rational behavior.

There may, for example, exist several ways by which to reach the optimum position.

They may depend upon the knowledge and understanding which the individual has and upon the paths of action open to them, because they imply, as must be evident, quantitative relationships.”

As becomes rapidly evident, von Neumann makes endless assertions such as these.

As if they were obvious and thus need not be examined at all.

The assumption that an under-defined “rational” selfish behavior is merely quantifiable and nothing more…

… and does not account for qualitative change (a mathematician’s worst nightmare)…

… is taking great liberty in over-simplifying human behavior to conveniently fit the limited parameters of his model.

In other words, it is cheating.

You are manipulating the definitions and interactions of your variables to fit an artificial reality of your model.

An Example of how this model fails

Let me give you an example.

In Euclid’s fifth postulate, it is considered a “rule” that two parallel lines will never intersect. Euclid was alive around the time of the mid-4th century BCE, before Eratosthenes (276-194 BCE) made his beautifully elegant discovery that the Earth was indeed curved and also made a pretty accurate first measurement of the size of Earth.

That is, Euclid assumed a linear geometric space upon which the real universe was expected to “fit”. While it is true that two parallel lines will never meet on a two-dimensional plane, they can meet on a three-dimensional plane.

As is now understood, line A and line G, can be measured as 90 degrees from the equator line and thus are parallel lines, and yet they can eventually interface with each other if the surface is curved.

The problem with assumptions such Euclid’s is that they are ultimately only true in an artificial situation and are not reflective of how such things will interact in reality. Also, there is no way to predict from Euclid’s fifth law, how two parallel lines would interact in a three dimensional space, let alone in n dimensional space as described by the physicist Bernard Riemann.

Ironically, in his book, von Neumann likens his “pioneering” work in the field of game theory to that of what physicists have been doing for centuries, that is, mathematical formulations that represent, albeit simplified, the “laws of nature,” concerning matter and energy. However, von Neumann again showcases that he has no comprehension as to what constitutes the foundation for such “laws of nature.”

In his Hypotheses that Lie at the Foundation of Geometry and other works, Riemann rigorously developed the notion of an anti-Euclidean physical space time shaped not by linear dimensions of an “x,y,z grid”…

…but rather dimensions defined by an ever growing array of discovered physical principles such as magnetism, light, heat, gravity, sound, etc….

… each organizing principle being ironically characterized by both a finiteness and unboundedness with quantized least-action pathways discoverable therein.

According to Euclid’s logic, you never “see” two parallel lines intersecting and thus it is unfathomable that they ever could intersect.

His “rule” was based off of shared assumptions of what we “think” we are observing in such phenomena, however, this is not necessarily reality and it certainly does not translate to a “rule” that governs all.

By von Neumann acknowledging that he himself is heavily relying on his so-called “self-evident” truths in simplifying human behavior…

… he is asserting an outcome…

… he is not proving the outcome’s natural occurrence.

The Robinson Crusoe example in Monetarist Economic Theory

According to von Neumann, the Robinson Crusoe example was used by the Austrian economic school to model an individual’s behavior towards maximizing pay-off in an environment (in this case an island) where the resources available to you are set and limited.

There are many problems with this…

… but the most unforgivable one is the assumption of a set, limited and unchanging reserve of resources available to the individual.

In other words, the Austrian school of economy and von Neumann with them, consider Crusoe’s deserted island as the perfect case study for a limited resource, zero-sum game scenario.

Ironically, this assertion is entirely missing the point of what actually occurs in Daniel Defoe’s story of “Robinson Crusoe,”…

…and it causes one to wonder whether these theorists ever read the book or rather read a two line cliff’s notes synopsis.

Henry C. Carey, Lincoln’s economic advisor, would say in his book “Unity of Law” (1872):

“Crusoe having made a bow, had thus acquired wealth; that wealth exhibiting itself in the power obtained over certain natural properties of wood and muscular fibre, thereby enabling him to secure increased supplies of food with greatly diminished expenditure of labor. 

Having made a canoe, he found his wealth much increased, his new machine enabling him to obtain still further increase of food, and of the raw materials of clothing, at still decreased cost of personal effort. 

Erecting a pole on his canoe, he now commands the services of wind, and with each and every step in this direction finds himself advancing, with constantly accelerated rapidity, toward becoming master of nature, and a being of real wealth and power.”

Does that sound like the description of a “limited resource,” “zero-sum game” scenario?

In other words, where is the “set” limit?

The limit is constantly being readjusted to what the individual creates which changes his/her relationship to the “utility” of the resource.

For example, the resource wood, depending on the individual’s innovation can be used to keep one warm and dry, cook food, create weapons, create shelter, create a ship for travel etc. etc.

The existence of yet-to-be-created potential thus offsets the entire system of von Neumann because his system has no way of predicting potential, i.e. qualitative transformations, nor how it will affect behavior.

If you cannot predict future qualitative change, which is ongoing, such as the discovery of electricity or the creation of man-made Plutonium and other transuranic elements…

… or the potential waiting to be unlocked by the very feasible fusion plasma torch that can turn landfills into resource mines…

… how can you assume a defined set limit or even a defined zero-sum game as a “self-evident” truth when you cannot even predict what is the limit?

The Supposed Paradox of “The Greatest Good for the Greatest Possible Number”

In von Neumann’s book he refers to “the greatest good for the greatest possible number” as a contradiction, because according to von Neumann you cannot maximize two or more functions at once, that in a social economy, all maxima are desired at once by various players.

That is, there is no concept that it is possible to cooperate and share an optimal outcome, without it coming out of “your” share so to speak, that comes at a cost of having less instead of more.

This is a very basic understanding of economy, and again does not account for how cooperation and creative potential can work to transform the “goods” of an outcome.

For instance, country A is militarily stronger than country B, which is rich in many raw resources. 

Country A is also stronger politically than country B in that, there are no other countries that will likely intervene against country A’s actions if it chooses to invade country B. 

What course of action will yield the greatest return to country A?

Well, there is a very obvious answer to that question; however, contrary to popular thought it will not yield the greatest optimal outcome.

The greatest optimal outcome is rather to cooperate.

It is in both country A and country B’s best interest to share knowledge, even if country A has much more knowledge, such that country B develops the capability to refine its raw resources.

By doing so, country B will yield a greater return in trade over the long-term to country A, and country A does not have to worry about a future retaliation from country B.

By developing a more advanced economy the wealth of trade is increased for both countries.

By cooperation, the optimal outcome is transformed and offers a greater return.

This is exactly the model that is being used by China presently in their philosophy of “win-win cooperation,” and it has proven itself most effective despite all attempts to villainize it as something nefarious.

Rather than fight over resources, there is a cooperation to share technology, increase resource yield and share a greater boon than originally existed.

John von Neumann goes on to state in his book, that the more players in the model, the easier it is to predict the outcome, since the use of statistics and probability are increasingly better indicators of behavior and performance. As he states:

“When the number of participants becomes really great, some hope emerges that the influence of every particular participant will become negligible and that the above difficulties may recede and a more conventional theory become possible. These are, of course, the classical conditions of ‘free competition’.”

He goes on to use the example of our solar system, with its nine major bodies, as being much harder to model than 10^25 freely moving gas particles, as per gas theory, simply due to the sheer number of objects you are dealing with.

This is truly a remarkably absurd statement, where von Neumann is asserting that if the solar system had more major bodies orbiting within it, it would thus be easier to model based off of probability.

Every planet in our solar system is a different size and weight, with a different number of moons. Every planet revolves around the sun in imperfect elliptical orbits that change slowly overtime, the planets travel along these orbits in a non-uniform way that is observable through planetary retrograde motions.

The fact is that our solar system is not some perfectly closed system that is uniform and consistent in its actions, there are cyclical changes but there are also non-cyclical changes that are occurring.

This is due to our solar system orbiting around a galactic center of the Milky Way which is itself moving in yet-to-be discovered ways within a larger cluster of galaxies.

Therefore, you cannot use any theory of probability because the system is in a state of ongoing non-linear change. The more bodies you add to such a system the more complex it becomes, not the more negligible.

For example, there exists no straightforward formula to identify all prime numbers, though there are an infinite number of prime numbers.

Prime numbers are a reflection of a non-linear process of change.

Such an oversimplification of nature shows the audacity behind the assumptions that make up such formulations like game theory.

You are nothing more than a virtual avatar in their synthetic world with programmed limits to what you can and cannot do in the game they have created for you.

• Game theory does not represent the motivations behind human nature, but rather imposes such limitations since, as they acknowledge themselves, it is easier to predict and control your chosen selfish behaviors which are encouraged and rewarded with “incentives.”
• It is a system of enslavement that encourages its slaves to fight each other for “table scraps” and never question the hand that withholds, the system that creates false scarcity and promotes antagonism over artificial stressors.
• We are taught never to question the rules given to us in these game theory scenarios, but to react accordingly to what has been defined to us as a limited set of options in an artificial scenario.

Perhaps the best indicator to this is, ironically, the very creator of the prisoner’s dilemma, John Nash. Nash had won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994 for his “landmark” work beginning in the 1950s on game theory.

Although it is not clear whether he was suffering with paranoid schizophrenia when he developed the Nash Equilibrium, starting in 1959, Nash would go in and out of mental hospitals for over nine years.

In 2007, he was interviewed while still working at Princeton. Here is his very unselfish offering of his “enlightenment” (his words) on game theory after over 50 years of work in the field. Keep in mind he is using the definition of rational behavior according to game theory, which is defined as a selfish self-interest:

“I have had some trouble myself on the psychological level; I’ve been in mental hospitals…

I realize that what I had said at some time may have overemphasized rationality…

And I don’t want to overemphasize rational thinking on the part of humans…

Human beings are much more complicated, the human being as a businessman….

Human behavior is not entirely motivated by self-interest of each human…

...game theory works in terms of self-interest, but…

...some game theory concepts could be unsound. There is over-dependence on rationality. That is my enlightenment.”

This article was originally published on Strategic Culture.

MM Ending Thoughts

The entire West are basing all their plans, their strategies, their efforts, and their predictions upon “Game Theory”. But this theory is faulted,; tremendously faulted, and those that follow it against a society that has a better understanding of how the world works, will lose.

And the entire world is waking up to this realization.

There’s one easy prediction, though. The US is just about done as a world power, society, economy, concept or even joke. 

- One night in Amerika

Inside America you have people that are watching their world crumble around them… and it’s not a game, and they want out.

On the global stage, we see nations in competition and those that follow the “Game theory” model fail, time and time again.

The world belongs to those societies that embrace things as they are, and not as they want them to be. And that means getting off the game board, and changing out the game pieces for real, tangible and accurate measures of society.

Daily Video Report

I am going to add a semi-daily video report on what is going on in China. This is going to be my first one. I took it about 45 minutes ago. I guess you can say it’s my pissed off opinions to counter the wide-spread of lies and disinformation that bombards my morning feeds day-in and day-out.

You can view it HERE. 137MB. I talk a bit about cameras and why the “color revolution” sponsored by the NED (the CIA) failed in Hong Kong. Of course, you will never read what I am talking about in the Western press.

They have more important things to talk about, don’t you know…

• Prosecutors investigating Trump tell witness to prepare for grand jury testimony…
• CLAIM: The Don intervened to stop probe of Patriots’ Spygate scandal…
• Bezos to Own ‘APPRENTICE’ Tapes?

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Articles & Links

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• You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
• You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
• You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
• You can find out more about the author HERE.
• If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
• If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

For the longest time, I had believed that the Strauss and Howe predictions for the Fourth Turning was correct but that the timing was slightly off. Instead of a Crisis Catalyst in 2005 and a Climax in 2020. I argued that the Crisis Catalyst occurred three years later in 2008. Which would launch a Climax in 2023.

Now I am not so sure.

What Strauss and Howe stated

If the Crisis catalyst comes on schedule, around the year 2005, then the  climax will be due around 2020, the resolution around 2026. 

What will  America be like as it exits the Fourth Turning? History offers no  guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong—the  possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues,  from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume  that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible  tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary  hardship, but debasement and total ruin. 

Since Vietnam, many Americans  suppose they know what it means to lose a war. 

Losing in the next Fourth  Turning, however, could mean something incomparably worse. It could  mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence—and perhaps even  our nation—might never recover. As many Americans know from their own  ancestral backgrounds, history provides numerous examples of  societies that have been wiped off the map, ground into submission, or  beaten so badly they revert to barbarism.

Indeed, the dates are close but seem to be off by a few years.

In our case, it appears that the “Crisis catalyst” did not occur in 2005 as predicted. It occurred in 2008 with the Wall Street “too big to fail” debacle.

That was three years later.

But does that mean that the Climax would also be delayed by three years?

I am now thinking “no”.

What is the Forth Turning Crisis?

This is what Strauss and Howe wrote;

And finally we enter the Fourth Turning, which is a Crisis. 

This is an era in which America’s institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up—always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. 

Civic authority revives, cultural expression finds a community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group. 

In every instance, Fourth Turnings have eventually become new “founding moments” in America’s history, refreshing and redefining the national identity. 

Currently, this period began in 2008, with the Global Financial Crisis and the deepening of the War on Terror, and will extend to around 2030. 

If the past is any prelude to what is to come, as we contend, consider the prior Fourth Turning which was kicked off by the stock market crash of 1929 and climaxed with World War II. 

Just as a Second Turning reshapes our inner world (of values, culture and religion), a Fourth Turning reshapes our outer world (of politics, economy and empire). 

To be clear, the road ahead for America will be rough. 

But I take comfort in the idea that history cycles back and that the past offers us a guide to what we can expect in the future. 

Like Nature’s four seasons, the cycles of history follow a natural rhythm or pattern. Make no mistake. Winter is coming. How mild or harsh it will be is anyone’s guess but the basic progression is as natural as counting down the days, weeks and months until Spring. 

As you can see, the essay originally published on 3/11/19 by Neil Howe confirmed that the “Crisis catalyst” did not occur in 2005 as predicted. It occurred in 2008 with the Wall Street “too big to fail” debacle.

But no one knows exactly WHEN the actual Crisis will occur.

It could be as early as 2020, or as late as 2025. And as I look at what is going on around the world, most especially with the belligerent activities of the American military empire, I see elements of a Hot War everywhere.