Pro-China legislators blocked the swearing-in of pro-Independence lawmakers in Hong Kong. Pro-Independence activists from Hong Kong told Taiwanese not to give up on independence. China said that independence for either Taiwan or Hong Kong is a “futile” plot. Then, Hong Kong told Taiwan not to meddle in other countries’ affairs.
Taiwan’s former president from the former-controlling party faces charges of leaking secrets of the State. That former-controlling party is working on formulating its opinion of Taiwan and China, while the newly-controlling party’s administration investigates the former president.
The Philippines won’t be cooperating with the US Navy anytime soon. Old traditions are over. Philippine military leadership wants China to make the first move in the South Sea, but China already has, especially with the man-made islands.
China also made the first move in Hong Kong’s independence movement. Without the change to vet politicians in advance, rather than vet HK laws after the fact, HK’s Independence movement might not have had enough wind to be what it is. Likewise, the Western press continues to publish stories casting doubt on China’s economy, based on debt. China’s press responds by casting doubt on the Western stories that cast doubt.
The trend seems to be announcing opinions about other countries’ opinions about their opinions. So much opining about opining almost resembles pre-WWII Europe.
The best-kept secret seems to be that everyone’s money is based on debt in this brave, new world, including pre-WWII Germany.
WikiLeaks’s time ran out. So has a lot of people’s.
Extraditing Julian Assange for “rape” charges to Sweden, where he can then be extradited to the US, would reduce all future “sexual” allegations to being a potential fake tool in all future cases all over the world. The media made sure we are to that threshold. If the charges are real, then the extradition order would include clauses that he be returned to Ecuador once the case is cleared and any sentence served, but that probably won’t happen because that is probably not what is happening.
As we can see with the media’s assault against Trump, sexual charges have already been reduced to a mere means of a more deeply-motivated political assault. Remember, this happened after WikiLeaks attacked the incumbent’s political party during October Surprise season—but not back in September, after the FBI revealed that Obama was chatting with Hillary pseudononymously on her server. That’s curious. What is also curious is the incidentally well-coordinated release of emails from both the FBI and WL.
WikiLeaks may view their mission as holding governments accountable with conspiracy, which was never going to last, but the greater achievement is accountability to competence.
As with Snowden, the best response from governments would have been to ignore and deny. To attack is to notarize. Those seeking to prosecute Assange and Snowden are the real leak—proving they don’t know how to keep secrets, thinking that prosecuting the ones who outsmarted them would make up for the fact that they failed in their main task: to keep secrets secret. By prosecuting Snowden, the NIA pleads “guilty” to incompetence in front of the world. If the FBI director doesn’t know the simple Apple backdoor that any high school student knows, prudence says he won’t tell the press. But, we’re not looking at prudence—not from governments, not from WikiLeaks, not from big Internet companies, not from anyone.
If Trump wins the White House, he should honor Snowden and Assange. Notwithstanding that they both helped him get elected, they exposed the guards of government secrets as being too out of date for the tech age. Annoying, yes, but Snowden and Assange showed the US that the digital age needs tech-savvy people calling the shots where Intelligence is concerned. Anyone who saw public statements from the brass at NIA or FBI concerning Snowden or iPhones knows that they are being run by tech incompetence. Due to incompetent leadership, Snowden and Assange did not have high security clearance, but were given high-access information anyway, somehow; they told the public in public; they did not tell enemies in secret; they should receive honors as Good Samaritans.
WikiLeaks, however, was never going to last. It was always going to be a kamikaze mission. It was always going to be the focus of every attack. Everything seems to become a tool of something else, these days. If WikiLeaks lasted too long, it would become a tool of conspiracy and therefore no longer be useful.
More importantly, WikiLeaks is simply no longer necessary for its own purpose. Rather than having a web space or URL, the mases can use searchable tags. Publicizing WikiLeaks has already turned WikiLeaks into a meme, thanks to Federal action.
The entire topic opens up the discussion of news itself. While big media companies are consolidating, the clear results are that media outlets are multiplying. Even Verizon wants in on film making.
Anyone can have a YouTube channel. Anyone can have a blog. Private or public, corporate or individual, anonymous or identified, hacked or honest—anyone can post information. WikiLeaks gave the public an idea, the government validated it, now WikiLeaks has worked itself out of a job.
All WikiLeaks needs now is to get shut down, thereby promoted to eternal and immutable martyrdom, and then thousands of uncontrollable, less scrupulous, dangerous, and devious copycats will spring up across the globe. Everyone got more than he bargained for. WikiLeaks’s mission will soon be over-accomplished, thanks to the incompetent fogies managing the State who seem all to willing to help WikiLeaks with that last, vital promotion to godhood. By not understanding the notoriety of martyrdom, the all-time secret that all press is good press, and the basics of how technology works, responses from the State-media duo has handed the next election to Trump on a golden platter. This time, most of that news will be reported by individuals.
China expanded its network this week. The focal point was the BRICS summit. But, China also expanded its network into Space, sending Shenzhou 11 to the Tiangong 2 Space laboratory.
Meanwhile, back here on Earth, China’s solar, trade, and finance network expanded into roads with India, fighting terrorism with Russia, and world peace with South Africa. Aerospace was also on the table; South Africa has drones, solar batteries, and wind turbines. The activity at BRICS is all so fascinating, it feels like a day at Silicon Valley.
The excitement wasn’t limited to BRICS. China also wiped-out a huge chunk of debt in a State visit to Cambodia. Cambodia borrowed more money. Who wouldn’t?
The week of tech and finance continued elsewhere in the Pacific. Taiwan is manufacturing military parts for the US, not only for the Wolf A1 Carbine, but also PAC-3 Patriot missiles.
But, tech week didn’t go so well for Northern Korea. Their Musudan missile test failed, at least according to the Pentagon. Bummer. Everything else was so exciting.
If the Clinton campaign is doing so well, why are they working so hard? If the media “knows” Trump will win and has totally done himself in “this time” (as in many times before) then why do they have such a demonstrable effort against him? Why is it illegal for the public to read WikiLeaks, but not for CNN? And why, if the box office is down, did “Star Wars” help the box office make so much money? Are movies from the 80’s all that people want to see anymore?
When Trump “changes his mind” from a non-teleprompter statement to a media microscope interrogation a few days later, his supporters like him more for one reason: It proves he is normal.
Americans make whimsical statements every day as they toss ideas and formulate real opinions. The small back-and-forth as real Americans—including Trump—develop their ideas in a consistent, overall direction is a stark contrast to the flip-flopping of career politicians with calculated, consulted, contrived so-called “positions” as they forget whether they are speaking to their secret donors or the voters they scam. Of course, no one has a front-row seat to this difference like the media, who seem to be so ignorant of that difference that the ignorance has become an indictment.
No one will ever trust the media after this election. They have bankrupted their “emotional bank account” of public trust.
The sad part is how many career politicians think their smooth statements are actually helpful. But, the Republican rhetoric lovers forget that the smoothest-talking presidents with the least offensive speeches have always been Democrats. Republicans who get the blue votes always make big waves.
Everything, including the extra effort for Hillary, says that Trump will win November.
The tied rises and falls, but tensions only rise in the Pacific, week after week. This week, China and its old buddy, Russia, were seen in public together. And, it seems China has a new friend in the Philippines’ defense office. The tension is at such a point where the public has not only learned about it, but is getting “used to” it. The excessive education writers insert into their news articles, informing readers and re-informing readers about the history of China’s “nine-dash line” and the South Sea certainly helps move this from “news” to “mundane”.
But, who is the villain? Arguably, the US is the villain, but not for the conventional reasons. Had Trump had his way, the US never would have borrowed money from China to get involved in the Mid East in the first place. The US Navy could have then operated out of the red and more in the Pacific blue. Then, China’s “island-building” might never have happened and Beijing wouldn’t have been strong enough to vie for a fight that it seems to want so badly—at least by proxy of the changes in the maps Beijing insists on seeing printed globally. But, that’s all speculation.
As you watch headlines, note the trickle of economic articles on China. China didn’t get it’s money through innovation, policy invention, or good will; it got its money because the Western lower-middle class pinched pennies so much they would spend $1.50 in gasoline to drive across town where an item cost $0.75 less. That drove jobs to China—which capitalized on US penny-pinching and pinched their own dollars into pennies, another thing Trump has criticized the Chinese for. China won the lottery, a story which ends well for few.
So, like a 16 year old with the keys to the Porsche he bought with his rich uncle’s money, China tried to build islands in hopes of rewinding the pages of history to their nostalgic splendor. While the US abandoned the mess it made in the Mid East—creating an otherwise would-have-failed enemy in the process of going and leaving—China could capitalize on the vacuum left by the AWOL US. Had China known how to earn the money it ended up with, Beijing would have had the smarts to be where ISIS now stands. Had they the smarts to learn from loss, they would have beaten Putin to the punch and build their islands closer to the vacuum. But, like a jealous company set on “wants” instead of “needs”, China is building islands that the US can take over in 15 minutes.
In the end, China will have to sign some kind of truce, though probably not a full “surrender”; the man-made islands will go to the US or some puppet thereof; and the US presence will have done exactly what China didn’t want, thanks to China: expand. A stronger China in the Mid East with “status quo” in the South Sea might have been more profitable, for China most of all.
The irony of it all begs the question: Was the penny-pinching culture of the American lower-middle class some CIA plot from the beginning to boost China’s confidence beyond feasibility? Probably not. But, is might make a great thriller “espionage intel.” novel.
There is a point where moot meets mud. We are almost to that point. America is in danger because of both Trumpists and anti-Trumpists.
Anti-Trumpists—except “Cruzers”—despise every political opponent Trump cut down prior to the election. What anti-Trumpist likes the Bushes or Karl Rove? What Leftist or “pro-public sector expansionist” likes the Republican agenda? There is a lot of hate for Trump from the people who hate the people whose political careers Trump permanently ruined. They are quite ungrateful for all their enemies he has knocked down when their other “favorites” never did.
Why? The best explanation to this point is that anti-Trumpists live in worlds of “theory”. They aren’t founders of small business employers. They aren’t money-making, bread-winning, hard-working vertebra of the economy’s manufacturing backbone.
Anti-Trumpists include members of third parties who support politicians who lose every election, but somehow still pay their bills with campaign contributions. They work in an office of a company created by someone who is long decease where most of their “professionalism” is tied to “tone of voice” as they enjoy someone else’s wake, thinking it is the entire lake. Or, they live and work in the world of padded furniture, complements of big education. They theorize without ever making waves themselves, without ever cutting the top off the mustard, without having to prove whether their theories even work.
For too long, too many Americans have coached from the bleachers, instructed the driver from the back seat, and commented from the show’s peanut gallery. They criticize and say, “That’s the wrong way to do it,” while seeming to forget that doing a thing the “right way” involves the thing actually getting done. Perhaps, it wasn’t the right or wrong “way” that they were concerned about, but that the thing got done at all, and the “way” was their excuse to object. Or, perhaps they didn’t care whether the thing got done at all, but only about “the right way” exclusive of doing or not doing the thing that did or didn’t get done. And, our nation-wide lack of care for whether or not things get done has brought us to this election.
Trump’s worst is what he has said and how he says it. Both Clinton’s worst is in what they have done when they said the opposite. We all know who supports who. Of all possible criticisms, anti-Trumpists choose the arguments that appear to be most contradictory. One would think one would choose arguments that might hold up better. There are better arguments against Trump than anti-Trumpists give, such as “what would happen if he succeeds”. But, maybe Trump’s “tone” so angers “tone-lovers” that they lose their composure. Anti-Trumpists might be right, but if they knew why they were right, they have kept it a better secret than the contents of emails on a scrubbed email server.
Trumpism and anti-Trumpism are two symptoms of a disease in America—a disease which causes its victims to not know how to actually make stuff work, but to keep using proven-to-fail methods over and over again, expecting success. When some of them first and finally wake-up at last, they leap to the closest go-gettter they find: Trump. And, that’s true of Christians more than any other, both the White Religious Right and the Black Church Democrats, both who support the very poster-boy politicians who yank the football every November—at Thanksgiving, safely after the elections.
Trumpists, want “anything” that might change status quo. It’s almost dangerous. The biggest virtue Trump offers is that he is “different”, the second-biggest is that he has “done” what America needs done more of, namely infrastructure and job-creation. The danger is that Trump might succeed, which means shoes too big to fill and the quick downfall of America thereafter. For too long we have cared about manner more than results. Now, we want to elect someone who will hand us what results we wouldn’t work for.
If only the anti-Trumpists now and the pro-Bushists before had a little more awareness of the real world, the country’s situation would be different. Then, neither Trump nor Hillary could possibly be on the ballot. But, America has a disease of disconnecting theory with the reality it theorizes. So, 2016 has been condemned to a Trump-Hillary ticket.
