YEAR OF THE DRAGON: China trolls Russia Hard!
Happy Chinese New Year!
祝您门健康,,快乐,财富,万事如意!
As predicted here: 1) Sanctions work 2) China will stab Russia in the back.
(The harder the better, the more often the better).
The year of the Dragon is an auspicious year, and just like you probably know your western astrology ZODIAC Sign, all Chinese people are aware of the astrological year and many even believe it. So I make some bold predictions
Let's start it off by trolling Russia hard right in Vladivostok, you know, that place Russia stole from China.
“Fire arts performed to celebrate Chinese Lunar New Year in Russia” China Trolls Russia Hard!
Source: Xinhua (Officially Recognized Media by the Chinese government lit. "New China 新华=Xinhua)
http://english.news.cn/20240211/438b9c0c5c1242099c6fb483b6e8c55c/c.html
PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON
1. Many Chinese births this year! This isn't merely due to the end of the one child policy or fear of demogally raphic collapse leading to economic collapse resulting in the ouster of the CCP. It is simply the case that children born in the year of the dragon are thought to be likelier to be successful.
2. Bold Benevolent Moves by the CCP and Chinese businesses to generate clientele. It's long term self-interested and something China has historically been very good at. Rather than expecting war this year we should expect peace plans and peace overtures, China will try, and will have some success, at being a peace broker between the West and the South.
Strategic Rethinking: Just as the 1991 gulf war and 2008 forced China to rethink its military and economic strategy so also is Russia's flailing and failing war in Ukraine forcing a serious rethink in the PLA. Strategic uncertainty explains why for at least three years the PLA will be strictly defensive and will undertake no invasions. China will still argue for a multipolar world but will increasingly recognize the problems of international governance are such that from a security perspective you want unipolarity as it is more peaceful and thus more prosperous. This will lead Beijing and Washington alike to increasingly recognize each others multilateral initiatives. I expect no interference in Belt and Road Initiative for example and increased WTO cooperation, this is partly due to alliance politics, Europe wants prosperity, does not want wars, and prefers Washington to Moscow or Beijing.
Again the theme is: Benevolence which reinforces self interest. In conflicts between self-interest and benevolence expect the CCP to default to benevolence and do-nothing. I predict no Chinese provocations in the year of the dragon.
These are bold predictions and are not well-supported by current facts, unlike literally all my other predictions. Usually I make predictions based on observed facts, known intentions, logical extrapolations, and understanding all sides beliefs, including religious and cultural beliefs: as well as geography, climate, demographics, economics, history, languages (path dependence). Taken together, understanding all that enables accurate predictions. All I really have to justify my bold prediction this time is the cultural tendencies and Chinese past efforts at brokering a general Mid-East peace, the fact that China is the greatest contributor to UN peacekeeping, and past missions of China’s hospital ship Peace Ark to provide humanitarian relief in disaster areas, which was one of my policy recommendations to the CCP.
This is also bold but less so: China will reap economic and perhaps even political rewards from the West for pursuing benevolent policies this year, and in the next year too. Many Westerners will not notice Chinese benevolence this year is partly motivated by culture and astrology and so will repay Chinese generosity even after it ends, at least for a while six to eighteen months.
Think of this year as a special respite from the hell of the last few years, at least so far as China is concerned!
CHINA'S NAVY: TASKS, AMBITIONS, AND PROBLEMS
China is trying to build a navy which can exert sea control in the South China and East China seas, including the sealift for an invasion of Taiwan. I have explained in prior posts why this is over-ambitious and the political conditions are unfavorable too. More or less China is building a large navy for a war which will not happen -- one of their goals is to deter U.S. invasions, so in a sense of deterrence at least it makes sense. However, the real missions China's navy will be facing are anti-piracy, anti-terrorism, peace-keeping, and humanitarian relief. One reason China's preparations for an invasion of Taiwan are an unrealistic waste of money is the fact that the Chinese navy has exactly no combat experience. A thug boxer once said something like "Everyone has a perfect plan to win until they get punched in the face". It is a military maxim that no battle plan survives initial contact with the enemy. China would be better to focus on the actual missions it is certain to face rather than preparing for a war it will never start and frankly would not win because an opposed invasion is one of the most difficult military operations.
humboldt-university-students-confront-judge-erez-on-gaza-genocide/
I used to teach law there. I don't teach there anymore. Draw your own conclusions.
protests-by-relatives-of-mobilized-soldiers-gaining-momentum-in-russia-isw.html
guerrillas-sneak-into-airfield-in-yeysk-which-russia-uses-for-strikes-against-ukraine.html
russland-terroranschlaege-haben-sich-wohl-verdreifacht-wieso-ist-das-so-.html
Keine Ahnung!
russian-oil-tanker-u-turns-hours-after-being-hit-by-us-sanctions
Sanctions work. That's why those sanctioned complain about how they supposedly don't.
Attainable AI: Detect detection or pursuit by an opposing UAV take evasive maneuvers and signal human operator. This can be attained with off the shelf programming.
RESPONDING TO JOHN SCHINDLER
"Flight 1285 originated in Cairo, and Egyptian airports have long had serious security problems. As recently as late 2015, the Islamic State placed a concealed bomb on a Russian A321 airliner departing Sharm El Sheikh, filled with holidaymakers returning home. Its explosion over the Sinai killed all 224 aboard. This doesn’t mean that terrorists took down Flight 1285, particularly in the absence of evidence of explosives aboard the doomed DC-8 (the minority report’s claims in this area are weak and unsubstantiated). Nevertheless, that possibility should be reconsidered. At a minimum, it’s difficult to understand how the U.S. and Canadian governments declared that terrorism was not involved in the Gander crash just one day after the disaster. They determined that in 24 hours? How? As someone who’s worked terrorism investigations, which in the real world are complex and slow-moving things with lots of moving parts, that’s an astonishing claim. It reeks of a cover-up. Therefore, my counterspy-flavored questions rem
John Schindler (XX Committee, Top Secret Umbra) just posted about the 1988 Gander air crash. Back then airplanes were fairly frequently falling out of the sky thanks to USSR sponsored terrorism, which gave ideology and ideas to Iran and various nonstate actor terrorists e.g. red guards, banda rossa, Japanese Red Army, Baader Meinhof. Gandar probably was icing, and not a bomb. Eyewitnesses misperceive reality frequently. Air India bombing happened around then, so did the Lockerbie bombing, both of which are known terrorist incidents. TWA NYC was very likely also terrorism. But sometimes accidents happen.
My thinking about Gander is negationist. Let's suppose Iranian sponsored terrorists put a bomb on the Gander flight - why would it not have exploded on take off from Europe? The plan's crash is much more consistent with what would happen in a case of unobserved ice, a failure to de-ice as opposed to an altitude detonated bomb. There were some Iranian immigrants to Canada back then, but they were most all refugees from the Shah. Placing a bomb on board at Gander back then would be much tougher. The only possibility would be the IRA, but the IRA had already moved to a "target property, not people" approach, which culminated in the Bishopsgate bombing. I do think I would know if it were IRA. That just leaves Indian/Tamil/Lankan terrorists. FLQ back then had also already learned targeting people is a great way to lose popular support, just ask Pierre Laporte, oh wait, we can't. The USSR wanted all its state sponsored terrorists to cooperate and obey Moscow -- not each other. So there was very little or no cooperation between e.g. JRA, IRA, BM, WU, Red Brigades etc. aside from a general anti-imperialism ideology (directly or indirectly supporting the CPUSSR) and an unrealistic "heroic" "individualist" in other words naive understanding of how states relate to each other and the limits or possibilities of non-state actors and revolutionary change.
From the perspective of how radical leftists operated back then and in the decades since as well as from the practical questions of when where and how to place a bomb aboard a military flight and then detonate it, it seems to me much likelier that the Gander flight was simply water at 33 degrees F, 1 degree C which on take off with wind and altitude cooled to -1 C -31 F, froze, and made the already overloaded plan struggle and fail to gain altitude as the ice continued to congeal.
Hopefully some fictional author may find some inspiration for interesting stories from this tragic case of pilots possibly inexperienced with icing making a basic error in the sub-arctic climate of Newfoundland.
In any case, I am near certain that IRA / PIRA was't behind the Gander disaster. I do not believe Libya was either. Sometimes NOT ALWAYS it really does get better. Sinn Fein was elected to govern Northern Eire and there were no bloody riots murders or bombings. Given Sinn Fein's election to Stormont Parliament I expect there will be complete cooperation from Sinn Fein at all levels in case people are concerned about an IRA involvement in Gander. "Our revenge will be the laughter of our children." Bobby Sands.
LEARN CHINESE TO BUILD A BETTER FUTURE
I remember when google switched from a rule based expert system to a neural network. The quality of translations declined somewhat, for a year or two -- and then increased, year after year. Moreover, the number of language pairs google translated doubled and then tripled. I still see occasional bizarre translations, and baidu translate is better than google for Chinese-English and English-Chinese translations. I presume baidu uses a large neural network, too. GPT 3.5 does a better job translating than google. We are not getting GPT5 yet because we have yet to figure out how to keep it from being a cryptographic engine.
PROMPT
I would like you to generate 10 common english words which have at least one letter in common with the pinyin for the same word in Mandarin.
ChatGPT
Sure, here are 10 common English words that have at least one letter in common with the pinyin for the same word in Mandarin:
Banana (香蕉 - xiāngjiāo)
Taxi (的士 - díshì)
Coffee (咖啡 - kāfēi)
Panda (熊猫 - xióngmāo)
Pizza (比萨 - bǐsà)
Cinema (电影院 - diànyǐngyuàn)
Computer (计算机 - jìsuànjī)
Camera (相机 - xiàngjī)
Orange (橙子 - chéngzi)
Chocolate (巧克力 - qiǎokèlì)
I want to generate an anglo-chinese crossword puzzle. Each English word must have at least one letter in common with the pinyin for that word in Mandarin. These overlapping letters are to be filled in with the relevant Chinese character for the word. Here is an example
X香蕉香蕉X XX香蕉XXX香X
Banana (香蕉 - xiāngjiāo)
Can you make ten such entries?
Sure, here are ten entries for an Anglo-Chinese crossword puzzle, where each English word has at least one letter in common with the pinyin for that word in Mandarin, and the overlapping letters are filled in with the relevant Chinese character:
1. X计算机计算机X XX计算机XXX算X
Computer (计算机 - jìsuànjī)
2. XX橙子X橙子XX X橙子XXX子X
Orange (橙子 - chéngzi)
3. XX相机X相机XX X相机XXX机X
Camera (相机 - xiàngjī)
4. X熊猫熊猫X XX熊猫XXX熊X
Panda (熊猫 - xióngmāo)
5. X比萨比萨X XX比萨XXX比X
Pizza (比萨 - bǐsà)
6. X电影院电影院X XX电影院XXX影X
Cinema (电影院 - diànyǐngyuàn)
7. XX咖啡X咖啡XX X咖啡XXX啡X
Coffee (咖啡 - kāfēi)
8. X的士的士X XX的士XXX的X
Taxi (的士 - díshì)
9. XX巧克力X巧克力XX X巧克力XXX克X
Chocolate (巧克力 - qiǎokèlì)
10. XX香蕉X香蕉XX X香蕉XXX香X
Banana (香蕉 - xiāngjiāo)
Each entry has the English word with overlapping letters with the corresponding pinyin in Mandarin, and the Chinese characters filled in for those overlapping letters.
This time it got most of them right, still made a mistake here or there. Then again it is trainable...
Nothing to worry about. It is just a cross word puzzle