“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso

The wide variety of personal knowledge and experience shared in the diaries and comments at C99 has enriched my understanding of events shaping our present. Seven years ago if asked if Kennedy assassination or Vietnam had much direct influence on my life - would have said no.

I was too young to remember the assassination, had no older siblings to worry about a draft and Vietnam had ended prior to entering high school, so no worry about friends being sent to war and too recent for history class. My Dad completed a full 8 years in the National Guard to avoid the possibility to being called up and deployed to Asia by 1964. It was a nonissue.

Sometimes the complexities of events becomes clearer after reflecting on them periodically as one gains in life experience and age. Unknown blank spots in memory start to fill-in.

Unfortunately, The slow creep of activities in Asia fundamentally changing our nation appears to be happening again.

Never have figured out which powerbase keeps pushing Chris Christie into national office. He was the first modern political executive to use fear of an infectious medical condition to enforce a quarantine on an American citizen. The 2014 Ebola quarantine of nurse, Kaci Hickox, was foreshadowing of actions later of nationwide actions.

He is very careful with his words and interview with Judge Napolitano touched a some subjects that could turn into disturbing paths for our country. Including comparing dissatisfaction with Biden similar to the Carter popularity leading to the opportunity of electing Reagan.

A couple of responses I am especially concerned with are partially transcribed.

25:53 min - Christie: You Honor this is one where I think you and I disagree when I have heard you think about it before. I think this is a proxy war by China in Ukraine. I think the stakes are much bigger than Ukraine. The Chinese are funding this war by Russia, They are coordinating with the Ukrainians to supply Russia with the most sophisticated weapons.

And I think it is a pay me now or pay me later situation for the United States. If we are not willing to show the Chinese and the Russians for that matter, but particularly the Chinese that we are willing to stand up. And someone like President Xi goes to Russia before the war and says there are no limits to Chinese support of Russia. Well I think we have a bigger fight to win here Judge, And I am concerned about what the Pentagon has had to say, but I am more concerned with what President Xi had to say. I think we need to fight that fight.
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When asked about sending US troops to Ukraine: - First Ukrainians do not want them. Secondly we need to be very careful on how we choose where to put American lives at risk. And I would not do that in Ukraine at this time. Supplying them with the hardware they need to fight there fight themselves and to make it a fair fight against the Russians. And finally putting American men and women on the ground the ah (unintelligible).

Then lets him do his campaign shtick for the Libertarian part of his audience.

Where Chris Christie wants to take America - Election 2024 (Special Interview) (31:54 begins at 20:09)

Some background history on United States One China Policy and the Taiwan independence movement. The independence movement was in existence prior to Nixon and Kissinger changing recognition of Chinese nation being represented by Peoples Republic of China in international affairs.

John J. Tkacik, Jr. On Taiwan: Nixon: “What In Hell is the Taiwan Independence Movement?” Taipei Times Jun 26, 2023

Historians know all this because the Nixon Library has a tape recording of Nixon and Kissinger as they bantered about Taiwan’s unsettled status and the ultra-secret “assurances” they gave to Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai (周恩來) in Beijing. Nixon knew well that Premier Zhou had pressed Kissinger on the “Taiwan Independence Movement” [TIM] at least nine times during his July and October visits to Beijing.
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Nixon thought again, “… the other thing … I didn’t see anything in the State Department papers indicating that we ought to support the Taiwan Independence Movement.” After some to-and-fro, Kissinger allowed that perhaps Secretary of State William Rogers and his staff raised it the night before the Shanghai Communique was issued, but it was never raised “in the preparatory papers they gave us, never!”

To himself, Kissinger must have recalled the moment that Nixon’s most trusted confidant — trusted even more than Kissinger — Treasury Secretary John Connally, blasted him over his draft Taiwan language in the Shanghai Communique. Connally said bluntly “You’ve sold out.” He said the phrase “Taiwan is a province of China” to Americans “meant we were turning over Taiwan to China right then and there.” When Kissinger tried to explain the language to Connally, Connally warned “you never have a chance to explain these things after all hell has broken loose.” Kissinger changed the wording.

On the tape, Nixon and Kissinger reassured each other “our private understanding is that we won’t encourage it, we didn’t say we will oppose it either. We didn’t say we will discourage it either. We didn’t say we’d oppose it. We said we will give it no support. And that’s been our position.”

But their commitment ended there. The understanding with Premier Zhou did not require them to “oppose” or even “discourage” Taiwan independence; Kissinger and Nixon agreed, “if they want to secede, that’s their business.”

A couple of articles by retired Indian diplomat M. K. Bhadrakumar on shifting Asian relations.

Lessons from the Korean War Indian Punchline July 30, 2023

The psychology of forgetting and why memory fails is a tantalizing topic in the life of individuals or nations. Cognitive psychology spawned many theories about it. The main theory, the motivated forgetting theory, is the most charming as it is easy to relate to it: people forget things in the pitiless flow of life because they either do not want to remember, and painful and disturbing memories are, thus, made unconscious and very difficult to retrieve, albeit they still remain in storage in the attic of the mind.

The United States and the Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) is a case in point. Succinctly put, the war ended at a juncture when a “stalemate” prevailed, which in reality meant that defeat was staring at the face of the UN forces — as happened in Afghanistan.
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It is China which has the greatest stakes in resurrecting the true lessons of the Korean War. What perturbs Beijing is not only that the Washington elite have not only drawn some wrong lessons, but they are also “all targeted at China, specifically referring to the Taiwan question.”

The most notable revisionist theory has been advanced by none other than Mike Gallagher, the 40-year old former US Marine Intelligence Officer who is currently the Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, and is a trenchant critic of China’s policies on the Hill, and also an ambitious politician who is already a leading voice of the Republican right across the board
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What surprised China, perhaps, was that last Wednesday, on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Korean Armistice, Foreign Affairs magazine featured an article by Gallagher, which postulated three “lessons” that the Korean War taught the US — first, “Washington must not neglect deterrence and readiness,” and should always be prepared to fight and enhance military capabilities; second, “politics and combat are deeply intertwined”; and, third, once fighting breaks out anywhere with US involvement, “excessive self-restraint can invite further aggression.”

No doubt, these “lessons” drawn in the Beltway are manifestly targeted at China, and the timing of Gallagher’s essay in a leading public diplomacy organ of the US foreign policy establishment is not coincidental.
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Anyway, there has been a paradigm shift today. Russia today has nuclear superiority over the US and its allies. Unlike during the Korean War, North Korea and China now possess nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. But a cardinal difference in this paradigm shift is also that neither Pyongyang nor Beijing developed nuclear weapons capabilities as part of plans to initiate a war but, instead, to deter a US attempt to destroy them. The same holds good for Russia in Ukraine.

Wheel has come full circle in Myanmar Indian Punchline July 30, 2023 (Burma per US State Department)

If the past is any guide, the military leadership in Myanmar has either been talking to Suu Kyi behind the scenes or is hoping to re-engage her in a meaningful conversation. The fact that Thailand’s foreign minister Don Pramudwinai paid a secret visit to Nay Pyi Taw three weeks ago and met with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and Suu Kyi in prison suggests pivotal undercurrents.
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The paradox is, Western intelligence agencies are fuelling an armed rebellion against the Myanmarese generals in power from the hideouts in Thailand while also promoting a colour revolution and regime change in Thailand itself. The Myanmarese and Thai militaries traditionally kept close fraternal ties.
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The Thai military is making sure that Pita Limjaroenrat, a rich playboy retreaded through Harvard University and pitchforked to the vanguard of the colour revolution in Bangkok will not get the requisite majority support in the parliament to form a government.

Pita’s electoral alliance is unravelling leaving him in limbo. The second biggest constituent of his electoral alliance, Pheu Thai party, is seeking a modus vivendi with the politico-military establishment in Bangkok (backed by the monarchy) to work out a power-sharing arrangement that nips in the bud Washington’s best-laid plans to turn Thailand into a vassal state an anti-China base — an Ukraine in Asia on China’s doorstep.

Pita had made it abundantly clear that once in power, he would do all he could to evict the generals in power in Myanmar. Indeed, the Western strategy is to turn Thailand into a staging post to destabilise the countries along China’s “soft underbelly” — Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. Washington pinned high hopes on Pita who also possesses, curiously, the communication skills comparable to Ukraine’s Zelensky.
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Perceptions changed in 1998, when the US failed to bail out Thailand during the Asian economic crisis. Thailand does not view China as a revisionist power or a military threat. Instead, Bangkok considers Beijing as the country’s largest economic partner, and an ally. Succinctly put, American and Thai strategic concerns are sharply out of alignment.
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Suu Kyi’s absence worked well for the western proxies to try to usurp the democratic leadership in the country. Her return poses a dilemma for the Western powers.

More bad news for humanity from Ukraine. Am not including expanded conflict in Syria and Niger today.

During WWII food, fuel and other essential were controlled by ration coupons. At times I wonder if current inflation trends is the modern control method. Traffic on local roadways and in stores in very quiet.

U.S.-Led NATO Drowns Ukraine in a Bloodbath Stategic Culture Foundation August 4, 2023

New data this week, however, indicate the scale of losses for the NATO-backed Kiev regime to be much higher.

Satellite imagery cited by Intel Republic’s Telegram channel of newly dug cemeteries in Ukrainian territory suggests that at least 400,000 military personnel have died in battles with Russian forces. The graves presume individual bodies buried. In addition, not recorded are the countless dead who have been obliterated on battlefields or left to rot by Kiev regime commanders.

Another measure is gleaned from grim reports this week in the U.S. media that there have been 50,000 amputees among Ukrainian soldiers, according to the supply of prosthetic limbs from German manufacturers. Extrapolation from that figure of casualties corroborates the far higher estimate of war dead.
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What makes this all the more criminal and despicable is that the conflict and death could have been avoided. Washington and its European NATO allies chose to ignore all appeals from Russia to negotiate a political solution to Moscow’s long-held strategic security concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion and the weaponization of the Kiev regime. Moscow’s diplomatic efforts were repudiated in December 2021, two months before hostilities escalated.

Prior to that, the weaponization of the regime went on for eight years after the CIA backed the coup in 2014 against a democratically elected president. (Which, by the way, makes a mockery of U.S. and European condemnations this week of a military coup in the West African nation of Niger. Such selective concern for legalities!)
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Even more damning, the American and European leaders knew that the Ukrainian counteroffensive would not succeed. Reports in the New York Times and other outlets have coyly admitted that.

The impending disaster for NATO is colossal. This calamity makes the debacle of NATO’s defeat in Afghanistan exactly two years ago this month look like a picnic in retrospect.

President Biden is seeking reelection next year and the unavoidable fact is he has blood dripping from his hands for the barbarity in Ukraine. The epic horror – which has recklessly risked nuclear war with Russia – stands as a monumental intelligence, political, military, and moral abomination for Washington and its European vassals.
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If there were any justice, Biden shouldn’t be facing the electorate soon. He and his Western minions, including household media organizations, should be facing prosecution for war crimes.

RAY MCGOVERN TALKS UKRAINE, AFRICA, AND CHINA(1:01 min) with Garland Nixon

Old news with new confirmation with now public messages.

Text messages given to FBI: Chinese wanted Biden family name to help acquire U.S. energy assets Just The News August 4, 2023

“They will be the Goldmans of China,” one of Hunter Biden’s business associated boasted about the relationship with CEFC.

Text messages provided to the FBI show that a Chinese energy conglomerate that struck a controversial deal in 2017 with Hunter Biden began its pursuit of a relationship with the future first family back in late 2015 when Joe Biden was still vice president, hoping to seize on the name of one of America’s most famous political dynasties to provide cover for its ambitious plan to buy up energy assets inside the United States.
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By mid-March 2016 – 10 months before Joe Biden would leave office – the discussions had advanced far enough that two of Hunter Biden's business partners, Rob Walker and Gilliar, had drafted a memo for Hunter Biden to sign and send to CEFC, according to an email on Hunter Biden’s laptop entitled “H to Zang Draft.”
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Over the next two years, the Chinese energy deal would evolve into some of the most infamous moments of the Biden family scandals that were becoming publicly known from the Hunter's abandoned laptop and the reporting of news organizations ranging from The Washington Post to the New York Post. Those include:

• Ye would meet with Hunter Biden and gift him with a 3-carat diamond mto the future first son in February 2017.
• Joe Biden also met with CEFC officials, according to an FBI interview report of Rob Walker made public by IRS whistleblowers in their testimony to Congress
• Emails from Bobulinski would reference a deal involving “the big guy” and a possible 10 percent share of the deal for Joe Biden.
• Hunter Biden would send a stinging message to a CEFC executive demanding payment in summer 2017, even suggesting that his father was standing beside him as he sent the angry message.
• Hunter Biden would set up an office in Washington DC for the venture and ask that keys be made for his father, mother and uncle as well as one of the CEFC “emissaries” from China.

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In the end, the CEFC relationship fell apart as Ye was reportedly was placed under house arrest in his home country and Patrick Ho, one of the Chinese CEFC executives sent to the United States was arrested by the FBI and convicted of bribery and money laundering in the United States. Hunter Biden was never accused of wrongdoing in that case though he was paid nearly $1 million in a legal retainer to help Ho’s defense, according to documents on his laptop and federal court records.

Alastair Crooke weekly article link in Strategic Culture Foundation - The ‘Scandal Implosion’ Stratagem: Will It Work for Ukraine?

Russian Sanctions - What do You Think?... Did They Work? (28:07 min) with

At 10:19 Alistair Cokke discusses narrative Russia is weak. He attributes the beginning of the narrative to the 1760's by Louise the XV and his Polish wife. They created a story about the Russian Czar being weak. Peter theGreat wants to take over Europe. The myth continues to influence policy makers and war planners.

The livestream videos this week by Judge Napolitano channel ongoing discussions regarding current Ukraine/Russia conflict. The interviews are generally posted on Monday through Thursday if would like to view them in a more timely manner. The link opens in the LIVE column, occasionally an interview only appears in VIDEOS section.

What is on your mind today?