@soryang Well, it is clear the US is supportive of any and all hostilities between Japan and China, regardless of the reasons Japan might have. I hope the Japanese people see that we want them to fight a proxy war to further our interests.
I agree that global instability is not what any sane country wants, and China is nothing, if not sane. Nonetheless, the time of US global hegemony has run its' course. Our time being the Big Guy destroyed countries and got millions, perhaps billions, of innocents killed. We wore the crown shamefully.
Well, friend, about the only peace we have is what we can make of it in our homes. That said, enjoy your day with your family and friends.

Although it's threatened to rain here a few times the past week, we are still basically in a drought here locally, and the plants and landscape are dying again.

I gather from BT News they were subpoenaed by some Congressional committee for reporting news from a "leftist" perspective. I think it's the same for Tricontinental, which I haven't watched but associate with Vijay Prashad. I came across The China Report when I was looking to see if any of my regular analysts had done an interview lately because KJ Noh used to be a regular there, but for some reason doesn't appear lately. The host Amanda Yi seems nice. She, like KJ, is not Chinese but is Korean ethnically. I'm not sure if she's a US citizen or not. Sounds like she is. I'm pretty sure KJ is a US citizen. I started listening to him, when satellite radio became a thing.

Anyway, The China Report is BT News, so I guess they're on the list. Her guest this morning was a China/East Asian analyst/activist from Tricontinental. Sounds like a Trifecta! I didn't agree with everything she said, but they had good video of demos in Okinawa against the Henoko base, and also street demos against Takaichi's militarization program, obviously aimed at China.

Everyone in the US seems focused on Iran, Gaza, Ukraine etc., and rightly so. Yet at the same time, it has become clear that the propaganda campaign against China is in full swing in the media. The point of the program was the so called war for hearts and minds precedes the real war. Although I don't necessarily agree with an ideological approach to analysis of geopolitics, of course I have my own bias, these journalists and activists in the case of her Tricontinental guest shouldn't be targeted. imo. They are trying to get out the other side of the story in East Asia, which doesn't find its way into the English language media very often. Most of the English language reporting is terribly distorted, it's a narrative, not reporting. (if you use the word "imperialist" you're at risk on going on the list, I guess).

I haven't been able to use a chrome browser on this device, and I've noticed ms feeding me a lot of newsweek crap which falls right into the propaganda category.

I think that one thing that is being largely overlooked generally is that Japan although it has some opposition to militarization by Takaichi is not just being "strung along" by the US. They have their own agenda. The fact that they used to rule Taiwan for 50 years can't be ignored. I also saw one of these activist NGO/academic think tank programs on the other side full of "experts" on East Asia say that Takaichi's statement that Japan had an existential security concern regarding China's "threat" to Taiwan, is an incorrect interpretation. Takaichi's rationale for meddling in Chinese affairs has been wrongly interpreted as a "common self defense" grounds for Japan to intervene militarily. This is just legally and factually mistaken. She's relying on a self defense of Japan theory to justify potential intervention in Taiwan. This sort of propaganda gives equal weight to Japan's hypothetical existential interest versus China's sovereign interest in its own territory.

Another thing I saw yesterday was Col. Wilkerson's ending comment in the program with Larry Johnson yesterday, which was an excellent discussion, that China was licking its chops because of the huge mistakes the US was making which would hasten it's decline or words to that effect. I don't think this is right, because it is not good for the world generally for the US to collapse or anything like that. The Chinese recognize this. One can wish for mistaken courses of action, policies, and wars to be corrected or abandoned, yes. Strategic stability is what is sought, not US collapse. US precipitous decline is too destabilizing and encourages more "now or never" risk taking.

Sorry for all the edits, I got called away while writing this. Thanks for the OT!

@usefewersyllables Remember the days when we were handed a paper with test questions, sat at our desks and wrote in our answers, all the while a clock was set to go off at the allotted time. The papers were taken from our desktops by the teacher, and graded that night. Anyone caught looking at someone's answers had their tests picked up and graded F. Same at college. We must have done well, since we are the ones that brought computers to fruition.
The experiment has not worked as well as planned, methinks.
Don't beat yourself up for being an early techie. You could not have known what TPTB had planned. We still don't know. They want to reduce the population to 500 million, but we can't really imagine how the fuckers intend to do it. Slowly? Quickly? And what ill they do with all our rotting corpses? Bill Gates with a shovel in hand is hilarious!
Have a great day, friend!

from the "Is Our Children Learning", George W. Bush School of Educational Wrexcellence edition, we have this jewel:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/professor-hides-white-font-midter...

Who could've guessed that students who use AI to cheat on their assignments are incredibly lazy?

Jason Gibson, a history professor at Alcorn State University in Mississippi, says that he used a white font to hide a prompt telling an AI model to spew nonsense in the instructions for his mid-term.

Unfortunately, it ended up working a little too well.

"Thirty-two of my 35 students between two classes failed a portion of their midterm because they all used AI to generate their entire response," he explained in a viral TikTok, sounding incredulous. "And apparently they didn't proofread it."

The hidden prompt told the AI to sneak in random digressions about Madagascar. The midterm, by the way, was about the Industrial Revolution. And apparently none of the indolent cheats put in the bare modicum of effort required to at least check if what the AI wrote made any sense at all. All they did was copy-paste the midterm instructions into a chatbot, then copy-paste the chatbot's spiel back into the answer window.

The jokes just write themselves. As the country dives headlong and irretrieveably into the abyss, we will have this to accompany us. At least it will make the sudden stop at the end of the fall easier to stomach- because if this is our future, we'll damned well deserve it.

I mourn. Believe me, I mourn, because I actually voluntarily participated in the early stages of the machine-learning tragedy, back in the 70s and 80s. More fool, I.

@orlbucfan Ya know, when you have a major health event, you might approach it with fear or fight attitudes. The latter brings contemplation about who and what you are, how you relate to the world, and a clearer picture of what the world really is. His essays reflect that.
So, I love to shop! But I can't lift and carry. JtC brings everything into the house, I put it away.
Houstonians are whacking down the Flocks around the city. Good for them! Nobody is helping the cops identify the vandals.
Looks like August will be mostly dry, on top of being extremely hot. People have to be very careful when working outdoors.
Glad Bertha didn't mess with you and yours, chica!

"A meme: Mitch McConnell is on eternity leave." Rec'd just for that statement. He'll eventually croak. On to more positive matters. Very good to see JtC back to full battle strength with his posts. Speaking of grocery duty, it's division of labor here at the ECFL casa. Hubster does most of the shopping, and I do grocery put up. He knows I absolutely HATE any kind of shopping. Doesn't matter what it entails. I saw some Flock reads on my usual blog site. A Wisconsin regular posted an article that reported Flocks being destroyed by regular people. I think a lot of folks are just getting fed up with constantly being spied on and monitored. It's always the usual screwed up mindset doing it, doesn't matter what century. I hope for change but human evolution is sloooow. So, you two East Texans stay safe and cool, ya hear?