Category: Uncategorized

Correction on Recent Taiwan Post

In my 10-22-21 post entitled . . .

Joe Says We’ll Go to War to Defend Taiwan

. . . I referred to the US’s commitment to defend Taiwan under the Sino-American Mutual Defense Pact which, in fact, ended in 1980.  What took its place was the Taiwan Relations Act which DOES NOT PROMISE DIRECT US MILITARY ASSISTANCE.

Accordingly, Joe Biden’s comments in his CNN Town Hall wherein he told Anderson Cooper that the US WOULD DEFEND TAIWAN OWING TO A COMMITMENT WE HAVE ALSO WAS INCORRECT.  But, as I observed in my initial post, this was still the EXPEDIENT THING to say lest our allies EVERYWHERE begin to panic.

Besides, Republicans in Congress have currently introduced something called the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act which would GIVE BIDEN NEW POWERS to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion.

Here’s Pat Buchanan’s verbatim take on not only Taiwan but other openly “confrontational postures” adopted by the Biden Administration:

  • We are openly warning Russia that the U.S. may soon bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which would entail a U.S. war guarantee to fight on those nations’ behalf in a future military clash with Moscow.
  • We are openly warning Iran that time is running out, that if Tehran does not return to negotiations on the nuclear deal and compliance with its terms, a U.S. attack on Iran cannot be ruled out.
  • We are putting China on notice that we do not accept its broad claims to the islets of the East and South China Seas, and we may be there to fight alongside our allies to sustain their claims.
  • Now congressional leaders in both parties are crafting measures to give Biden authorization to take us to war with China to protect Taiwan, whose declaration of independence, warns Beijing, would cross its “red line” and mean war.

One has to wonder if US foreign policy hasn’t become OUTRIGHT DELUSIONAL.  We’re going to allow ourselves to be sucked into a series of potential wars such as these — when it isn’t even clear what, if any, are vital interests are?

Has our thinking become this sloppy, or are we simply ONE NATION UNDER HUBRIS?

Putin Weighs in on Trans and Cancel Culture

Even a clock is right twice a day.  Even a likely murderer like Putin who runs Russia’s centuries’ old secret-police state (Cheka, NKVD, KGB, FSA, GRU).

So, as a rational-minded CENTRIST, I find it extremely difficult to take issue with his TRANS comments below:

  • “‘Those who risk saying that men and women still exist, and that this is a biological fact, are virtually ostracized’ in the US and West in general, Putin said. He likened what’s going on to ‘a total phantasmagoria” – or dreamlike fantasy . . .”
  • “The Russian leader further called the inability of otherwise rational people to recognize simple biological fact of two genders, male and female, and to go so far as push this viewpoint on children a ‘monstrous’ subversion of timeless self-evident truth:

‘This is not to mention things that are simply monstrous,’ he added, ‘like when children are taught from an early age that a boy can easily become a girl and vice versa.  In fact, they are indoctrinating them into the alleged choices that are supposedly available to everyone – removing parents from the equation and forcing the child to make decisions that can ruin their lives.

‘This is borderline crime against humanity – all under the guise of ‘progress’”  

  • “He likened it to the ‘newspeak’ of ‘Soviet culture warriors’ in the early 20th century who wanted to propagandize the masses.”

Could this not be clearer?  PUTIN IS COMPARING WHAT’S GOING ON IN U.S. “PROGRESSIVE” CIRCLES TO THE KIND OF UTOPIAN SOVIET PROPAGANDA OF THE EARLY YEARS OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.  In other words, a kind of MADNESS.

How many EASY LAYUPS do we give him?

Here he is on CANCEL CULTURE.  Again, RIGHT ON POINT:

  • “Relatedly Putin took on ‘cancel culture’ – also likening it ironically enough to what existed under Soviet times. The historical reference the Russian president made is interesting especially given it’s Washington leaders and pundits that tend to describe him as wanting to somehow resurrect expansionist Soviet Russia . . .”
  • “The fight against racism is a necessary and noble cause, but in the modern ‘cancel culture’, it turns into reverse discrimination, reverse racism,” Putin said. “We see with bemusement the process unfolding in countries that have grown accustomed to viewing themselves as flagships of progress.”

Playing for TEAM USA these days is like watching your favorite college football team getting DECISIVELY OUTCOACHED.

And by a ruthless POISONER/SPY.

‘No Discernable Relationship . . .

. . . Between Percentage of Population Fully Vaccinated and New COVID-19 Cases in the Last 7 days’

Not great news, right?  It get worse.  Here’s the full quote from the US National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health:

“At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days (Fig. 1). In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people. Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days. The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated.”

In other words, to survive this thing one may need more than vaccines as one may still get it and need to be treated with anti-viral drugs.

Here’s the entire article:

Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States

And here’s the interpretation of the data as per the piece itself:

“The sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences needs to be re-examined, especially considering the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant and the likelihood of future variants. Other pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions may need to be put in place alongside increasing vaccination rates. Such course correction, especially with regards to the policy narrative, becomes paramount with emerging scientific evidence on real world effectiveness of the vaccines . . .

“In summary, even as efforts should be made to encourage populations to get vaccinated it should be done so with humility and respect. Stigmatizing populations can do more harm than good. Importantly, other non-pharmacological prevention efforts (e.g., the importance of basic public health hygiene with regards to maintaining safe distance or handwashing, promoting better frequent and cheaper forms of testing) needs to be renewed in order to strike the balance of learning to live with COVID-19 in the same manner we continue to live a 100 years later with various seasonal alterations of the 1918 Influenza virus.”

SOUND LIKE THE NEW NORMAL?

OH, YEAH!

Peterson Investigates Psilocybin

SUPERB DIALOGUE.

Jordan Peterson and neuroscientist Roland Griffiths go long and deep on psychedelics, specifically psilocybin and its use as a therapeutic agent.  This is a FIVE-STAR conversation.

Some points discussed:

  • Psilocybin as the junction of meaning and the ineffable
  • How facing what frightens you can be curative
  • How some who’ve taken psilocybin consider it among the most “precious” experiences of their lives
  • How psilocybin can help people become behaviorally more flexible
  • Is being just a function of consciousness rather than consciousness an epiphenomenon of matter?
  • Do psychedelics promote “productive reciprocity” in society?
  • How in 50 years, psychedelics themselves may be viewed as “crude tools” in consciousness raising
  • How psilocybin leads to greater openness
  • The weird experiences one encounters on DMT
  • How meditation creates a greater “stability of awareness” than intermittent psychedelic use
  • Harvard Divinity School’s recent formation of a PSYCHEDELIC CHAPLAINCY.
  • How “existential insufficiency” is grounds enough to legitimate the use of psychedelics for the population at large

Of particular note is how Peterson’s intellect ranges over the broadest number of interconnected subjects in this quite EXHAUSTIVE back and forth.  As for Griffiths, he’s both a true believer in and paragon of the SCIENFIC METHOD as well as the author of a number of highly regarded studies on psychedelics.

Joe Says We’ll Go to War to Protect Taiwan

I wonder if Biden remembers the Cuban Missile crisis?

In the nuclear age, you don’t go to war with other nuclear powers over territories within their obvious power sphere.  You engage with them in a way where both sides can STAND DOWN while NOT LOSING FACE.

WWIII would be over in HOURS, and no one would EVER recover.

Say it ain’t so, Joe!

ON THE OTHER HAND, we DO HAVE a MUTUAL DEFENSE PACT with Taiwan, and it’s TEN ARTICLES LONG.  So, Biden couldn’t exactly have thrown Taiwan under the bus on CNN.

But guess what?  Treaties can be broken, dissolved or bargained away.  Neither the US nor its allies is going to the mat over Taiwan.  And that includes South Korea and Japan.  And in the case of Japan, nuclear devastation isn’t THEORETICAL.  Besides, what they experienced, as horrific as it was, was only a TASTE of what’s available today.

UK Energy Suppliers Exiting the Market

From Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com.

UK Energy Suppliers Face ‘Massacre’ Amid Soaring Gas Prices

And, of course, the coal-fired power plants are BACK ON LINE.

The skinny:

  • “More than a dozen power suppliers in the UK have exited the retail energy market in recent weeks.”
  • “The UK has a so-called Energy Price Cap in place, which protects households from too high bills by capping the price that providers can pass on to them, but which additionally burdens energy providers.”

“Another 20 energy providers in the UK could go bust in what looks like a ‘massacre’ in the coming months unless the government reviews the energy price cap, the chief executive of one of the largest providers said on Thursday.”

That’s right, energy fans, we’re back in PRICE CAP LAND.  That’s pre-Reagan/Thatcher stuff.

May I suggest that we all STRAP IN.

Chanos: The Problem with China’s . . .

. . . Leveraged Prosperity.

Informative print interview with the always insightful CHINA UBER-BEAR/SHORTER, Jim Chanos.

China’s Leveraged Prosperity Model Is Doomed

Issues covered:

  • Who exactly is Xi?
  • Real estate leveraging on the heels of the tech crackdown
  • The weakness of the investment-driven economic model vs. the consumption driven model
  • The problems posed by China’s real estate sector now calculated at between 30 and 40% of GDP.
  • What’s behind China’s current saber rattling?
  • The coming attack on all commercial power centers; next up, China’s banks.
  • Will China move from real estate investment to defense spending and spark an arms race?
  • Can China maintain a closed currency?

Plus much, much more.

Critical info for China-watchers.