China is cracking down! All enemies are in the crosshairs: Facebook pages, SCMP news articles, terrorists, religions, demonstrators, “separatists”, “hostile forces”, the Dalai Lama… the usual suspects.
Northern Korea has the sky in its crosshairs, and it doesn’t miss. Now, Kim wants to aim at Manhattan. China didn’t talk about that, specifically, but, Japan isn’t happy. The North announced their plan to “liquidate” Southern assets remaining in their possession, though they didn’t specify any potential buyers.
Taiwan’s military may have squandered efforts last week in the raid of three documents about the KMT’s “White Terror”. Another man claims to have 1,000 such documents, including pre-execution photos of prisoners. He told the public that the soon-to-be-no-longer-KMT military may have been looking in the wrong place for self-inditing documents. He asked to be contacted. At press time, no word yet on any reply.
Leading a nation is much like raising a teenager—everything you say and do is wrong and you must speak your idea in less than five seconds, anything longer will be ignored, anything shorter will probably be ignored anyway. And, America has an opinion about Ted Cruz and Donald Trump—probably about as many opinions per person as there are five second moments in each day.
The latest opinion is the boilerplate page of comparing the leading candidate to Hitler. The problem with this comparison is that Hitler did not set off alarms before it was too late, Trump does. If Trump was planning a Hitler-style takeover, he’s not being sneaky enough. A better Hitler comparison would be the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, who is now third in line for a position he “didn’t want”, after unifying a divided party by “making demands and conditions”, all after losing his bid for second in line. An even better comparison to Hitler would be the man responsible for ousting Ryan’s predecessor, thus rolling the red carpet for Ryan to gain his seat—a man who, like Hitler, has wide support from the religious community, sets off few to no alarms, and is somewhat of a loner in the capitol, Cruz. But, none of these really have the cloaked, condescending, wild inner-nature—and none of them are anti-Israel—except one other man who will leave office in January, the door likely smacking him on the way out.
As for America’s opinion about Rubio, Florida is winner-takes-all. The Bush protege seems bent on dumping his leaking coffers to give Floridians opportunity for practice voting against him. Wow, that went fast.
The real dangers are Americans who trust any candidate. Rubio notwithstanding, we know no one’s intention and even the best men are corrupted by power. Americans will not be safe as long as they continue to put their hope in politicians rather than expecting themselves to guard their own liberties and future.
China’s political Two Sessions just finished. It is good to see concern for responsibility, enforcement, growth, and grace within China’s governance. Clean air was on the agenda. 300,000 soldiers have been cut from active duty, mostly non-infantry. The military did not get the 2.5% budget increase it wanted, only 1.5%. A number of generals are disgruntled. President Xi’s decisions related to a slow in economic growth. Macau and HK SARs were underpinned as mostly autonomous and will receive extra priority and money, raising questions about an increase in gentrification. All the while, Beijing’s Taiwan policy remains unchanged: peace, trade, but, above all, no independence; the term “family” is being thrown around.
Interestingly, China has stated it will not talk with the new president, Tsai, until her party alters its bilaws about Tiawan’s independence. China has little understanding of the difference between a party and a government since, via Beijing, they are one-in-the-same. While China remains a “frenemy” of the free world, there are lessons to be learned and 5,000 years to understand. Even a deer hunter understands the nature, instinct, and thought processes of deer. The West has not displayed the same with China, only disdain. This is probably why China wins against the West on so many fronts and will continue to do so until the West learns a valuable lesson to the wise: Never hate your frenemies, study them.
The US Navy has dispatched what has been called a “small armada” to China’s troubled waters in the South China Sea. The USS Stennis group, including the flagship Blue Ridge, are making rounds. Experts anticipate more sail-by’s.
Meanwhile, Taiwan examines its past. The most recent scandal involved questions about use of military for a warrantless search and seizure of documents relating to the “White Terror” era of genocide and tyranny of Chiang Kai-Shek’s KMT-Nationalists in Taiwan, recently defeated in elections. One man was said to be given 15,000NT$ in “hush money”, the equivalent of $450USD. Military officials claimed to have signed permission and to have followed due process. If true, perhaps the military’s purpose was to remind the Taiwanese of the past by appearing to repeat it in the eyes of some.
