"there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them" Acts 2:3
求太平 1937, 2.0 礼拜天
It’s time for a little game theory!
Powergamer Move 1: “Black Plague”. When besieging enemy cities Go hard or Go Ghengis Khan. Load your catapults with corpses, dead horses, offal, and excrement. Launch them liberally into the besieged enemy city. Wait till the diseases kill and sicken the garrison. Then move on in, kill everything that moves, AND burn it all to the ground: the cleansing fire! Remember to quarantine your surviving raiding party from the rest of your golden horde for a week or two! Don’t worry if this unleashes the literal black death because…
Power Move 2: “Cowboys and Indians.” Give recalcitrant natives, pacified natives, and any other indigenous “problems” free blankets! Don’t bother telling the natives the free blankets you are giving them are infected with smallpox and god knows whatever else the Khan’s golden horde infected and inoculated your surviving black plagued ancestors with: the indigenous people missed out on all that black death because oceans. Wait one generation and marvel at the miracle of an empty abundant paradise with wonderful foods that totally weren’t genetically modified through selective breeding for millennia by an entire exterminated civilization. Remember: It is GOD’S WILL!
Power Move 3: “Blame the Other Guy”. Remember: your bioweapon isn’t a weapon, and even if it is one it really isn’t yours. It’s the SPANISH flu! It’s LEGIONNAIRES’ disease! Has nothing to do with you!
Power Move 4: Experimental human test subjects! Kill two birds with one stone as you depopulate rebel regions AND test, hone, refine your bio weapon! 大日本帝国注意! Banzai baby, ban, zai!
Power Move 5: Couple your bio-weapon with agitprop and psyops. Try to justify your trade policy import bans AND domestic repression as pandemic prevention! Propaganda and agitation can be combined with “blame the other guy” (he’s in Fort Detrick. Or Ukraine. Or Or Or!). 武汉在哪里?
Remember: Bio war is ineffective! It totally never happened!
All the above examples are fictive and not at all historical!
Looks like i’m not the only one who got V& and pwn3d. :/
From my research lab to yours…
Prigozhin’s Mutiny: Lern Russisch.
Blood Purges Sweep Moscow: “Where’s Waldo?” Lubyanka Edition
Where is Surovikin? Well, Surovikin is in prison (or dead). Gerasimov disappeared (=in prison, or dead) Prigozhin nowhere to be seen (running, hiding, or dead or in prison). Shoigu’s next. Shoigu is supposedly “in Cuba”. Yudin also “disappeared”. Don’t expect to see them again.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/missing-russian-general-sergei-surovikins-daughter-says-hes-totally-fine ok, he’s probably dead. Twising the knife, make the bitch beg, that’s Kremlin logic.
Putin Sends Body Double into Crowd to Feign Popularity
Yes, this too is illusion.
“He who must not to be named”.
This article agrees with me, no surprise here.
Ukraine will win.
Apocalypse Code 揭秘的钥匙
“Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll? But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside.’” Book of the Apocalypse 5:1-4 揭底揭底!
Looks like Russia’s back yard is gonna keep burning, huh. )
We’re going to raise the flame of civilization all right…
But first I must dispose of Putin with amore primitive kind of flame.
India: Apprenez l’allemand
India will try to play off the USA and Russia to benefit from both but ultimately will be unable to because of rivalry with China and serious demonstrated Russian weaknesses.
Alinsky and Sun Tzu
Alinsky and Sun Tzu both teach us that if we wish to effectively oppose another we must understand the other guy’s ideas and ideals. Alinsky goes on to argue we must try to hold the opponent to their own statements, goals, ideals, and especially promises — because they probably can’t keep them and that’s how you discredit them.
A lot of people would like to imagine the PRC isn’t communist, isn’t a dictatorship, isn’t striving for global influence. In other words: a lot of people are willing to engage in wishful thinking.
China’s Government is Communist.
If you want to grapple with them, whether economically, politically, or militarily, whether you want to help them keep reforming or growing or destroy them you must understand their ideas: And then make them keep their promises like Alinsky said to since they probably can’t)
The policies I advocate are realistic, attainable, sustainable, and will lead to global peace and prosperity. They are in your mutual interest. I enforce some of them with violence.
Have I told you about my wife?
Every mercenary is married. Her name is Death. I warned you: she is very beautiful. She would do anything for me.
Let’s hope Ukrainian diplomats can explain through their tears exactly what Russia did to Ukraine during a century of humiliation and especially this past year, and why China should stab Russia in the back, often, frequently, and hard. 义
ANALYSIS:
Liberalism v. Authoritarianism
LIberalism is the idea that the state should do little or nothing; that people generally should be free to do what they want; it's laissez faire, but not merely in the economy. Liberalism basically means free press and speech. These things are lazy low tax default positions which is why they are easy. But they lead to a society of overweight people, well except for the drug addicts, they're amped up on speed coke heroin and have no appetite. Liberalism means you're free to be an alcoholic, die of tobacco addiction, gamble away your life savings, and over-eat.
Authoritarianism is the opposite view: it regards state power as a necessary and good force to compel thieves and liars to put it down, stop lying, and start exercising and eating properly.
Authoritarianism is harder to implement, and not cost free. All that liberalism has features that kill the poor, benefit the rich both in profits from alcohol tobacco drugs firearms and unhealthy food, but also in the sense of no tax outlays for anything. It's an ideology of greed and exploitation masquerading as freedom. My critique of liberalism is more accurate and incisive than Marx's. We allow free speech to form and articulate political will: to create and then implement good laws and policies. We do not have freedom of speech and the press so that I have to put up with loudmouthed rude aggressive slobs spewing bigotry, hate, or taking a shit in public.
I'm definitely an authoritarian: state power should be final but for that very reason should be applied in limited well-considerd fields, namely: public health and well-being, policing, the military. I want a powerful but limited state both in domestic and foreign policy.
Lee Kuan Yew was an absolute genius and will make you all live better.
Chinese Diffidence (Action)
China's rise and rivalry would be impossible without the USA. But here, as elsewhere, the CCP attitude will be "So what?" and "What are you gonna do about it?"
I predict: Washington will over-react, act incoherently, and act ineffectively, with even more unrealistic views. This is why I can constrain, cajole, and command them to take up policies which are in the long term strategic interests of the United States, which is Henry Kissinger’s stated pole-star, the logic he followed for a century. These long term wise moves might look bad in the short term, and certainly will be opposed by some in the immediate, but those who oppose me shall simply be outmaneuvered by the better strategy I advocate.
U.S. Foreign Policy (Reaction)
It’s fine to say U.S. foreign policy is incoherent or self-destructive. I might not disagree. But my policies are highly coherent. What I mean is: I can constrain my counterparts and opponents. It’s entirely possible literal Biden reads my writings about “unity in conflict” and it is 100% certain Biden is capable of purposeful political theater unlike most Americans, whose theatrics are almost always personal or economic and thus less cohesive to effective foreign policy. I pointed out how Blinken could get what the USA wants, and then Biden decided to leverage that. How is that abnormal or incoherent? It isn’t. After SARS II rolled the globe, Beijing should be glad I’m not among the warmongers. I can get them both most of what they want. Though A and E can’t be obtained by either. Whether both will enjoy B C D or only one or two of them B, C, D depends somewhat on their own volition and acumen. I predict ranges of possible outcomes, while excluding the unlikely and impossible ones. It’s possible Prig will be alive in a year! In that case it’s because he’s “controlled opposition”. It’s also possible Prig’s already been fatally poisoned (some poisons take time) in which case he really did rebel and really is stupid. Sometimes we need to let time tell. Truth ALWAYS comes out, and what was it we once read about the power of truth?
解放我啊!
How to Win (or not lose…) an election
To win an election you must be extroverted, outgoing, friendly, charismatic, friendly, considerate: first, last and always. You must also be persuasive, a bridge-builder. It helps to be intelligent. You don't need to be an actor, or particularly thick skinned, and you ought not be a narcissist if you wish to win an election. Successful politicians don’t consider themselves oh-so-very smarter than everyone else, they have a confident humility about their own intelligence and their constituents’. They put others before themselves to get what they (both) want. “We can all figure this out” is their generally winning attitude. Fake and dishonest don’t win elections. People can actually notice who is a liar and then? Well, they don't generally like or trust that, which usually means no vote for you.
Deception Operations: Limited Time-Bound Tactical Advantages are Usually Squandered.
I basically hate twitter. Even before it was bought by eccentric stuntman capitalist. Partly because I knew their purported user base was fraudulently inflated: i just hate cheats. Partly because their core/investors are inexperienced yet think they know it all due to their trust fund. But mostly because a lot of it, like the Federalist Society” was SVRs most successful deep cover work (let the GRU take the credit ofc). All adding South African capitalist refugee does is lead to embarrassing questions for those fronting for the ANC, which I like because that exposed the inflated user base. Twitter is a dumpster fire of horrible. Don’t believe me? Ok, just go ask John Schindler. Since deception operations are at best only tactically useful we can and should have
Strategic Confidence in Truth
The truth always comes out in the end. And then what? Basically no matter how often someone lies or how many people lie the facts don’t change and eventually the discrepancies between the lies and the facts become clearer and clearer. And then…
Destruction and Construction
My problem isn’t how to destroy the government in Beijng or all China. My problem also isn’t how to destroy the government in D.C. or the USA. I could do either. Works of destruction are frightfully easy, just ask Osama Bin Laden. Oh, you can’t. Sow the wind? Reap the whirlwind. Though, if you’re willing to die you can get outsize kill counts. Works of destruction are comparatively easy. Many mass murderers can readily be found throughout history. So what? Visionary works intended to build something grand, refined, powerful, and durable are much tougher. That is exactly what I am doing. However, to get there, I have to win a war in Ukraine, and will do so — by any means necessary.
Russia in Ukraine: Destruction
My views on Russia’s war on Ukraine are shaped by two facts
Systematic Russian war crimes
Russia foolishly challenging the post-WW2 international law that state borders are not to be adjusted by war.
The first one is why these criminals deserve to be severely punished.
If there were any doubt though, the second one makes it crystal clear: these are dangerous destabilizers: they need to be ejected from power and their mafia state needs to get dismembered. The dismemberment is why we can get all the Chinese cooperation we want. You think Beijing won't be happy to eat Russia's lunch, and no longer face a warlike barbaric northern neighbor? China's gonna win a war without fighting. Again.
People thinking about Putin’s war in nuclear strategic terms, like it were still the 1960s are wrong, but so is Putin. Putin thought he was fighting a post-modern war but wants to be in the 1800s with imperialism and spheres of influence. Instead he’s in something more like World War … One.
Many Americans and Russians are wrong about the strategic challenges and opportunities in Ukraine (never let a crisis go to waste), but they are wrong in different ways.
Ukraine can, and will, get lots of strings-attached support from France, Germany, Sweden and from all those countries Russia occupied, notably Finland and Poland, which, in consequence of that occupation now hate and fear Russia, with fewer strings. Let's hope Hungary and Orban figures out Putin is a dead man walking and stabs Putin in the back so Hungary will get some influence in the soon to be independant Mari, Komi, and Nenets republics.
There will be no negotiated solution to the tragic war in Ukraine: Who negotiates with mass murderers? Who negotiates with compulsive liars? When someone breaks into your house, kills your kid, and rapes your wife, you don’t tell him he can move into your garage if he just leaves through the back door. You stab him in the throat, again and again, until he can’t move again, ever.
If Putin fought rationally, but he didn't, then maybe some “accommodation” would be possible. But Putin’s crimes are not limited to Bucha. His trail of murder and lies leads lots of other places too, Aleppo for example, and so many dead journalists. Probably Beslan too.
The Americans will be guided by idealism and antipathy to Russia to a deep pockets a contribution. They generally don't understand how the world order they built is being modified to be more effective. The USA leadership have demonstrated throughout the mid east an incapacity to not bite off more than they can chew and also the incapacity to build liberal democracies out of ... patriarchal tribal Islamic cultures. In other words: the U.S. idealism and ambition while hopeful and helpful is often unrealistic. The American’s strategic errors are not the fault of Jews, Arabs, a bankers’ conspiracy, space aliens from Alpha Centauri, RuSSian disinformation, or anything other than their own inadequate foresight, hubris, and a domestic class-structure of mass support for elites ready willing and able to … “bite off more than they can chew”. Having a terribly loyal mass base enabled them to make bigger errors, but also enables them to quickly course-correct, to turn on a dime. Despite that, I am skeptical about a truly rational U.S. approach to China and Ukraine, given the past performances during 20 years prosecuting an ill conceived strategy which at some personal cost I clearly opposed. US class structure and culture are why the USA can be constrained, cajoled, and ultimately led to the right outcomes both for the USA and planet earth. Although the USA has some serious class-structure flaws that doom them a bit, those are not catastrophic errors. However, they do create sub-optimal foreign policy which we can, should, and must out-maneuver shrewdly, for their own good.
We can't negotiate with Putin because he lies constantly and goes back on his word at any opportunity. He's repeatedly shown himself to be unreliable.
Ukraine will exhaust Russia. Putin and his regime will not and cannot survive the hell on earth Putin himself unleashed. Ukraine will not be exhausted by this war. People never get exhausted in a defensive war: they get killed, occupied, exterminated or fight on to victory no matter how long that takes or at what cost.
Antipathy to Russia will guarantee U.S. support for Ukraine. Lots of live Vietnam vets, even Korean war vets many exiles remember USSR or fled Putin. Stoking up Murrican hatred of Russia would be easy. I only need their antipathy, but can get hate if I want. I prefer not to incite hatred, blind anger is blind and thus less effective. Precisely targeted well-measured blows are generally more effective.
Even FRANCE, a historic Russian ally supports Ukraine and opposes Putin. Maybe Macron and his Minster of Foreign Affairs have a break-through solution? I doubt it, sadly. I also hope for “eastern winds” from Beijing, but sadly, no, we cannot expect and ought not hope for some sudden surprising diplomatic solution whether from Paris, Beijing, or anywhere else. This is because no matter how rational or fair Macron or Xi might be Russia remains a mafia state led by a thieving thug who killed his way to the top and will keep killing until he is forced to stop, probably by a bullet in his head. YGWFD.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine would go to a negotiation table. I can EASILY get Ukrainians to hate Russians and could get Russians to hate Ukrainians. Horrible. Necessary? If it is I would do it. Hatred generally makes war-fighters err. Cold blooded killing is more effective in war.
Justification? It's about rules and that which is right. Putin is a lying war criminal, a mass murderer, a thief. Ukraine wants to be something other than the mafia state's colony. So they mae war, and they will war on until the mafia state collapses or Putin is killed, maybe both.
Culturally, I prefer Russians to Ukrainians. So what. Russia has a horrible incompetent war criminal at the helm of state power. Putin needs to go out the window "to Australia": like so many of his victims.
Oh Look.
An entire movie about blowing up a bridge.
I wonder what it could mean?
Don’t think I won’t do it.
I totally will.
我的祖先会骄傲!
The Grand Pacific Peace: Construction!
Eyes on the Prize. Team USA is 2 and 0 in global wars, and 1-0 in cold wars.
After Putin loses his failing and flailing war in Ukraine, Ukraine will be rebuilt with European funds and Russian reparations and integrated into the EU and NATO. Russia will likely be disagreggated into its constituent republics, they will be granted independence leading to rising influence for Finland, Estonia, perhaps also Hungary (backstab bozmeks, backstab Putin now), in the Finno-Ugric soon to be former “Russian” Federation. Turkiye will gain influence and rival with China in the Islamic and especially Turkic former “Russian” Federation Republics. Though, China will likely enjoy undisputed control or influence in the Amur valley and Vladivostok as Russia is stripped of its UN Security Council Veto an nuclear weapons.
This leaves the question how to build, maintain, and strengthen the rules-based international order featuring free movement of goods, services, and investments which have made China rich?
Briefly my theory argues that a combination of collective security (NATO of the east), (mutual!) deterrence, peace-through-trade (aka liberal peace theory), functionalist institutionalism, pacific ideologies such as Confucianism, Mohism, Sufism, and at least some Christian sects expressing shared practical real-world goals of peace through prosperity and the actual attainment and protection of substantive as well as procedural human rights together can create a real pacific, and then global peace with common global prosperity as a consequence. This will be attained with or without Chinese cooperation, but the more China cooperates the wealthier China and Chinese people will become.
Kotkin and Schell seriously over-estimate the supposed unity between Xi and Putin and also over-estimate Xi and Putin’s capacity to drive global affairs, even were they well co-ordinated (they are not). Putin is not Stalin. Xi Jinping is not Mao. Trying to equate them or even drawing parallels is at best disinformation, at worst inapt over-simplification. That leads to bad analysis, which results in bad policies. Both Xi and Putin are reacting in different ways — reacting, not acting — to the fact of U.S. global dominance. Macron or Scholze have greater initiative than Putin or Xi.
Putin tried - and clearly failed - to cobble together an ideology: orthodox-great Russian nationalism “Eurasianism”, to oppose western liberalism. However, all his and his government’s corruption and violence meant Putin’s theory, while internally coherent and apt for greater Russia (only), could never attract adhesion or emulation from other countries or generate allies.
Xi, in contrast, has tried for a sort of neo-isolationism of China: Sinicisation of religion in China, mercantilist or perhaps corporatist nationalism, with a veneer of visionary but perhaps unrealistic infrastructure/basing projects (belt and road) supported by banking and investment blind to foreign domestic mal-governance whether corruption or violating human rights: debt trap diplomacy, the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank. All these (overly?) ambitious infrastructure and investment projects are, supposedly, bound together by security cooperation (the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation). To the extent these institutions are built on corruption, and blind to human rights they will attract weak yet rigid adherents (if any). China cannot construct a powerful foreign policy without further domestic political and economic reform. While there is much to criticize in liberalism, defensive realism is simply better than any of the alternatives.
CIA: The Reverse Midas Touch…
It looks like CIA Director Burns imagines the war ending in some sort of negotiated agreement a year from now. If that’s truly his view, he is badly mistaken. He might want that. Und ich? Ich will ein Pony und ein Eis!
The cognitive biases of
escalation of commitment and
the sunk costs fallacy
both make negotiating a peaceful end to any war difficult to impossible.
Examples abound. The Union in the American Civil War, the allies against Nazis and Japanese imperialists, Rome against Carthage (punic wars), Napoleon against Russia: all could have ended the war a year or two quicker had they been willing to accept less than unconditional surrender.
Warring parties tend not to negotiate due to their ongoing desire to kill each other, and are seriously constrained by their grieving enraged and consequently irrational constituencies to victory at any price. War stupefies.
Furthermore, Putin is a compulsive liar, a serial killer, a war criminal, a thief. There is no negotiating with such because they will break their word all the time any time and regard compromise and negotiation as foolish errors of weak willed cowards. Putin is copying all of Hitler’s playbook, including the genocidal parts, seeing as he is murdering off the slavs. There’s no rational political actor there to negotiate with.
With all respect, I’ve outlined the ways this war will end repeatedly: most likely, Russia will collapse and disintegrate in much the same way as Yugoslavia did. Rebellions, mutinies, civil war, assassination(s), invasions are all possible. Let’s hope the troika kill off Putin quickly so that something less horrible than another Russian civil war might be averted.
The USA, though terribly powerful, is far from Russia — unlike China, Germany, or even France and lacks certain expertise. Many other countries also have self-interested reasons and moral justifications to see the so-called “Russian” Federation .. de-federalized, stripped of nuclear weapons, deprived of its UN Security Council Veto and forced to pay reparations to Ukraine for its ongoing war crime. This isn’t going to end in negotiated anything. Nor should it. This ends with Putin dead or in the docket for war crimes. Ukraine will win.
Uniting with “the progressive wing of the bourgeoisie”: 求太平 = Save the Grand Peace (Pacific)
喝几碗酒
how many mugs of wine were drunk
任风沙掩埋住我来时的路
let sandstorms cover the path i took here
无人把守
unmanned, undefended
这无尽的硝烟把天空染红
this endless cordite smoke dies the skies
我怎么能低头
how can i bend my head
就算前方再多再高的山丘
even if there are countless foothills and mountains before me
挡不住我
they cannot stop me
在下一个渡口
descending from another ferry crossing
谁在唱着离愁
who is singing leaving sorrowful
竹林 草木皆兵
the bamboo stand hides a hundred ghost soldiers behind each and every tree
先生 隐姓埋名
Gentlemen are all disguised
曾经 如梦初醒
once it was like awakening from a dream
不求功名
don’t seek scholarly honours
求太平
save the grand peace
行军令响起
echoing calls of command to the army on the march
孤傲的身影
silhouettes, alone, aloof
我不害怕
i fear not
刀和箭 光和影
swords and arrows light and shadows
烽烟起 作风景
rising signal fires arrange the theater of operations
生死的对局
the game board of life and death
抗争着命运
fighting fate
让我留下最后一篇
let me leave behind some written record
骄傲的入阵曲
proudly enters the marching tune
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