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March 2022
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Insidious Lies of the Western Press24/11/2018 The following is the BBC News title for a major election news report from Taiwan:
Taiwan voters reject same-sex marriage in referendum On Saturday Nov. 24, Taiwan held a mid-term election of great political significance. The outcome was an earthquake that registered at least 8 on the Richter scale. The result was such a crushing defeat for the Independence-minded DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) currently in control of all major branches of the ROC (Republic of China) government that the president Tsai Ing-wen immediately resigned her role as the party leader of the DPP. If you call the American mid-term a blue wave, the Taiwan mid-term is a blue tsunami (the DPP is represented by green and its opponent KMT by blue). The voters have had enough of DPP after only two years of unopposed green rule, and are voting for KMT and closer relations with mainland China. Even the politically significant deep green city of Kaohsiung, the base of DPP political power, flipped by a wide margin. While this article does report on the election, you can never tell from the title. I was searching for Taiwan election results and I did not think this was it. This is your freedom of the Western press, my friends. Expect insidious lies when facts do not coincide with their poisoned narratives; forget about balanced comments. Hypocrisy is a two-headed snake; it bites the hand that feeds it. That other head with the venomous fangs is now the most powerful man on earth.
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The new Agenda for Peace24/11/2018 Dave Lefcourt posted the following article as an urgent call for peace: End the provocation to Russia and China that could lead to war, a war that the US cannot win.
Here is my comment: If protests ever worked, there would be no war. To those in power, a peaceful protest is but a slight irritation less significant than a flea bite. After all, who are the US leadership? They are Americans elected by the people and given unlimited power to wage war. Notice how there is never any arguments from the people about being saddled with unmanageable debt to fund all these wars, so that the 1% and military industrial complex can profit from them. Notice how the people send their sons and daughters in harm's way so that they can come home in pieces to be buried in honor. Notice how these democratically elected leaders threaten, sanction, starve, terrorize, torture, bomb, and slaughter millions from all around the world with impunity, and then they retire with honor, glory, and wealth. Don't blame it on Trump or the 'leadership.' The people allow it to happen. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "A man can't ride your back unless it's bent." If the people of America really do not want war, all you've got to do is the following: Gain control of the three houses and de-fund the military. Make them apply and justify for everything. You can use a fraction of the war budget to fund free college, Medicare for all, housing allowance, and basic income for all Americans. What's left can go to infrastructure and job creation. If war-mongers want to advocate for war beyond defending the homeland from invasion, then let the advocates (1) pay for a license and a higher tax rate for war advocacy; (2) pay for all war expenses (nondeductible) out of their own pockets; (3) send themselves and their own children into the line of fire (the children may of course disown their parents and denounce them publicly to avoid going); (4) receive no political protection if they are charged by international courts for war crimes; (5) put up a hefty bond in case the country is sued for damages; (6) be disowned by their country if they're ever captured; (7) be banned from taking public office for life; (8) be deprived of any overt media support on pain of debilitating fines for both the advocate and the offending media, and (9) if they come home after not winning a clear victory and gaining peace with honor, be given to the angry mob and thrown over the Tarpeian Rock. Peaceful protests sounds nice, but if the people of America want to stop the warmongers, you'll have to take the war to the warmongers. Let them have a taste of their own wars, then peace will have a chance.
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The Mainstream Media17/11/2018 The following is a true story. In 2005, I was introduced to a gentleman with a historical background in China. His name is Sidney Rittenberg. He is an American who had spent 38 years in China since 1945 with 16 of which under solitary confinement.
Sidney said that he was invited to a foreign correspondent gathering in Beijing. They invited him because they thought that he would stand on their side in their campaign against China and the CCP. Sidney went and listened to how these foreign 'journalists' talk about their plans to smear China. Sidney never blamed anyone for his being caught up in the turbulent currents of the times. On the other hand, he expressed disdain for these so-called foreign journalists. I learned something precious from Sidney that day, that the freedom of the Western Press is really about their freedom to prevaricate, equivocate, and obfuscate. It's hard to imagine that these minions don't know their own bosses are directing and profiting from unending campaigns of torture and terror, while they kill, maim, and starve people all around the world. Sidney even wondered aloud why these people were able to hold this kind of gatherings in Beijing right under the nose of the central government. After this, I would always read Western news reports with a grain of salt. On the other hand, people who are biased from a lifetime of consuming bullshit will be happy to believe in any lie as long as it reinforces their prejudice. It's almost impossible to convince morons that they're morons, or hypocrites that they're hypocrites.
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Why do people believe in bald-faced lies?14/11/2018
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Who Lost Vietnam?14/11/2018 First learn about Who lost China, and we may come to the same conclusion that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 was the pivotal moment and President Wilson, the Princeton Democrat, might have been the original culprit. No one actually lost China or Vietnam of course, this is just an exercise to dig a little deeper beneath the superficial half-truths inculcated in our minds as the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Without going much further back than the colonization of Vietnam by the French in the nineteenth century, otherwise we will learn that many people have lost Vietnam in the past, let us start the story at the fin de siècle of the nineteenth century when great change was in the air. Vietnam had been colonized by the French for several decades. Vietnam was and still is a fiercely independent people. There were frequent uprisings, one of which was actually led by a Chinese known as Liu Yongfu, later glorified as the Black Flag general. To clarify the situation a bit, China itself was at that time under the rule of a foreign tribe, the Manchu, which had descended from the south Siberian Jurchen. Their dynasty is known as Qing, and it is under the weakened rule of the late Qing when the foreign powers turned China into a semi-colonial country. Under Qing rule, the common Chinese people did not have a strong view of nationalism. This may help to explain why it was possible for 20,000 English and French soldiers to run rough shod over the 200,000 Qing army in the Opium Wars. The small foreign army was supplied and sometimes guided by the locals. To the Chinese peasants, it was a fight between the western foreigners and the foreign Manchu court. The peasants paid their taxes and their rents to the local gentries; they didn’t care if the barbarians wanted to slaughter one another. Things changed with the fall of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China. The Chinese literati and academia aspired to be independent from the foreign powers. This led to the rise of nationalism in China. Certainly, the Vietnamese had similar hankering. While the political ties between China and Vietnam over the ages have been complicated, the deep cultural ties are unmistakable and undeniable. Vietnamese nationalism had a chance to make itself heard at the end of World War I, the war to end all wars. After all, Wilson’s Fourteen Points did clearly and unequivocally state that the people of the colonies would have a say in determining their own country’s sovereignty. At the Paris Peace Conference, China as a victor on the Allied side experienced another humiliation when its territory was ceded to Japan. This event led to the rise of the Chinese Communist Party. Few people know that while China still had a representative at the conference, a young Vietnamese scholar was stopped at the door. This young man quickly learned the western lesson that “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” The Vietnamese people would have no say in the sovereignty of Vietnam. It would remain a French colony. This young Vietnamese scholar in Paris would one day lead the Vietnamese people (with the help of the Chinese and the USSR) to fight the Japanese, the French, and later the Americans at the cost of great suffering and bloodshed. His Democratic Republic of Vietnam would eventually evict the foreign soldiers and unify the country to achieve independence. His name is Nguyen Tat Thanh, better known to us by his Chinese name Ho Chi Minh.
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Victoria's Secret Clan in America11/11/2018 Today is November 11, the magical day. I will divulge the secret identity of a person who has received help from the Stone man with one eye.
Clue number 1: This person has experienced an implausible rise from the lowly plebs, overcoming insurmountable obstacles to become a People's Tribune. Remember the peasant Liu Bang who became the emperor of Han, or Tang's lowly concubine who became China's only female emperor, or the wandering beggar monk who became the founding emperor of Ming? We're talking something of similar magnitude. Clue number 2: Success has not arrived all at once. The struggle will continue. It promises to be long and oft-times existential. This person says, "We cannot stop." This is the same as the indomitable will described by the Stone man with one eye as "Never giving up." Clue number 3: This person achieved the position of popular power not by selling promises to the highest bidder, not by horse trading with lucre and lies, not by engaging in incendiary demagoguery, and most importantly, not by radicalizing the flock with divisive and extremist ideologies. Who was it that said "Dogma is a bitch"? This person applied the Second Law of Economics known as Teyve's Conundrum and won. Clue number 4: This person spoke the unvarnished truth while millions were watching, "It is not good enough to throw a rock at our neighbor's yard. We’ve got to clean up our own house." All mainstream media has deleted this blasphemous statement. This short inconspicuous sentence implies that we are ourselves to blame, that we are responsible for many of the ills in the world, and that we have to clean up our own act. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” He also said, “A man can't ride your back unless it's bent.” In the end, he held himself and all Americans responsible. Our People's Tribune understands Rev. King's point, that hypocrisy is a two-headed snake; it bites the hand that feeds it. Clue number 5: The First Law of Economics says, "Thou dost not own anything that thou canst not hide or defend." All living organisms must obey this law in order to survive. All trade depends on the explicit proof and implicit trust of ownership. You do not own anything you cannot defend and you cannot trade anything you do not own. This People's Tribune is a defender of the people, especially those who have been rendered defenseless. Clue number 6: All evidence shows that women are in the ascendancy. Females must unite to counterbalance the zero sum winner-takes-all scorch earth self-destruction strategy of the alpha males. Our defender is a woman. Clue number 7: Our People's Tribune is a young woman who rebels from the indoctrination of the ossified elite accepted as the inevitable reality by the zombified populace. She is in fact the youngest Tribune ever to be elected over someone who has been entrenched in great power for the past twenty years. Only the young can see through the deluge of lies. People who live and die in bullshit cannot comprehend flowers. Our defender has seen the truth and is now graced by the fragrance of the immortal bloom. Answer: Her name is Alexandria, which means "Defender of the People."
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Have Germans always lived in Germany?9/11/2018 In the course of reading European history, I was surprised to learn about people everywhere that are said to be Germanic. I think Caesar first used the term in his Gallic Wars. They were barbarians east of the Rhine. Later on, we learn that there were Germanic tribes west of the Rhine as well. In fact, the Celts and the Germans were very similar. Maybe they were the same but with regional differences. Now we know that their languages are different branches of Indo-European. Later the Germanic Goths showed up. The Ostrogoths ruled Italy and caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire. They were followed by the Lombards, who were also Germanic. Italy was basically Germanic. Even Dante’s family was Germanic. The Visigoths also sacked Rome, but settled in Iberia. So Germanic people were in Spain and Portugal. The Franks, who became the French, were a Germanic people converted into Roman Catholics, learned to speak Latin, and were Rome’s allies. Charlemagne formed the Holy Roman Empire from his Frankish kingdom. The Germanic Vandals went to North Africa and built a kingdom that included Sicily. The Angles and Saxons that went to Britain were Germanic. England means Land of the Angles. The Nordic Viking was Germanic. They went everywhere, including Ireland, Britain, Greenland, Iceland, Russia, France, and Sicily. The Normans came from settled Vikings in Normandy. They too formed the kingdom of Sicily. The Normans under William the Conqueror conquered England and his descendants still occupy the throne. It’s just that I had thought that Germans were always in Germany, but their forefathers were all over the place.
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To understand the truth, one has to dig a little beyond the surface. Rare treasures are buried deep.
Most of us have heard about the Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, the First Sino-Japanese War, and the Boxer Rebellion; these disasters for China occurred during the last half century of the Manchurian Qing dynasty. We have to clarify that the Manchu tribe that ruled China for 268 years under the Qing dynasty was a foreign tribe originally from south Siberia. The Qing’s weakness in its waning years caused many Chinese scholars and military thinkers to consider reformation or revolution to deal with the Western onslaught. The progressive Emperor Guangxu wanted to adopt constitutional monarchy, but the plan was thwarted by the Empress Dowager Cixi. The only other choice left for the Chinese was rebellion and revolution, replacing the Qing dynasty with a Chinese republic. One of the first revolutionaries who took up that stance was Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Dr. Sun was educated in America and adapted the American system with Chinese characteristics for China. A local uprising in 1911 at the city of Wuchang (a part of modern Wuhan) accidentally succeeded and caused widespread rebellion, culminating in the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912. Dr. Sun however did not have an army, and the republic was quickly hijacked by the military. Thus started the era of the warlords. Dr. Sun had hoped that his republic would be supported by the West, but it was in vain. Western powers in China had enjoyed the privileges and benefits of semi-colonialism, and it was easier for them to continue the partying with the warlords in power. The Chinese warlords were constantly fighting among themselves and triangulating between competing Western powers and Imperial Japan for support. The foreign powers obviously felt that a fragmented China was easier to control and exploit. Without Western support, the revolution led by Dr. Sun failed. During the First World War, the Beijing warlord was considered the legitimate government of China by foreign powers. The Chinese government entered the war on the side of the Allies, and sent 150,000 laborers to the European front-lines. Some of them engaged in dangerous work such as digging trenches. Approximately 10,000 Chinese workers would die for the common cause. Chinese academics were hopeful that after winning the war, China could rid itself of semi-colonialism under Wilson’s Fourteen Points. But at the Paris Peace Conference in early 1919, China did not have a voice, and the previous German colony in Shandong was ceded by the victorious Western powers to Japan. China was the only ally who did not sign the Treaty of Versailles. China was completely on its own. It could not depend on a single ally to stand up and speak righteously about this travesty. This is where it all began. Chinese academics and students were furious. They started a national protest known as the May Fourth Movement. Many of them realized that they could not depend on the good will of the West to gain true independence. Dr. Sun meanwhile gave up on waiting for American support and, with the uncertain backing of a fickle warlord, set up his own government in the province of Guangzhou (old name Canton) in the south. When the Russian Bolsheviks fought a civil war to bring communism to Russia, some Chinese academics became attracted to this new form of political concept which brought about a successful revolution of the common people. Thirteen academics got together in Shanghai and formed the Chinese Communist Party (in the absence of its two founders). Dr. Sun Yat-sen realized that to unify China and to rid itself of semi-colonialism, he needed an army. Dr. Sun received the help of the Soviet Union and he co-operated with the Chinese Communist Party. Many senior members of the CCP were also members and senior executives of Dr. Sun’s Kumintang (Nationalist Party). The two political parties under the leadership of Dr. Sun and with the help of the Soviet Union established the Whampoa Military Academy. The school would churn out most of the military leaders who would defeat the warlords, fight the Japanese, and fight among each other in the Chinese Civil War. Dr. Sun died prematurely. The KMT, the government of the Republic of China, and the Nationalist army came under the control of one person, Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Kai-shek with the support of the Western powers purged the communists and persecuted them in a period of so-called White Terror. Thus started the Chinese Civil War. Eventually, the Chinese Communist Party won the Civil War. America backed the wrong side, and it would not be the last time. There were a lot of China hands who knew the situation in China but the powers that be in Washington would have none of it. When the soul of America gave rise to Joseph McCarthy, rapprochement between the two countries was hopeless. China went its own way, as if the Americans had never come … until Nixon. According to this story, the original cause of the break between China and the US goes back to Wilson, who sold out his own principles to placate Japanese demands, causing the May Fourth Movement, which was led by one of the Founders of the Chinese Communist Party. The rest, as people say, is history.
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Tactically, there is probably very little a human being can do to defeat a chess-playing computer or a deep learning machine. The question asks for a strategy, which requires a different way of thinking.
Here is a suggestion. Since the computer chess programs are developed to defeat an opponent based on chess rules, and human opponents are inherently inferior because we do not have the computer’s computing prowess, the human strategy is to first acknowledge that fact, and stop trying to win against the computer opponent. Rather, the human strategy would be to play for draw every time. Devote all your energy to learn how to draw. Let the computer use up all its time to figure out an attack in a blocked position and then block it up some more. When the computer has less time to compute, maybe it won’t be able to make the best move. In any case, pat yourself on the back when you achieve a draw. Another reason that humans cannot beat computers in chess is psychology. I have studied a few Grand-Master vs Computer matches, and you can feel that palpable fear in the human. The computer just marches on inexorably until the human breaks down and makes a stupid mistake. It’s hard to notice brilliance from the computer even when it wins. Playing for draw takes that pressure away for the human. Since the computer plays to win while the human plays to draw, it may befuddle the computer. The deep learning computer may learn about this draw strategy and play for draw as well, hence human and machine will co-exist harmoniously. When humans discard their zero sum destroy your enemy mindset, we will not have to fear AI. In tennis terminology, it’s called Endless Love. |