RB—The Taiwanese-American Angelica Oung (Amherst College) is part of the thoroughly Americanized diaspora, who returned to Taiwan in 2020 and has been somewhat changing her world view since. Working at the Taipei Times before founding the newsletter Offshore Wind Unredacted and then becoming a substack contributor with Elemental (on Taiwan nuclear issues) and Taipology (on politics). She was a very vocal supporter of the separatist DPP, but has now become disenchanted with them but still operates from many Western ideological suppositions. This is very obvious in her piece on One Country Two Systems. She attempts to make sense of what happened in Hong Kong and does correctly note that the British never really provided Hong Kong with anything near full democracy, while noting that the Party-state offered the direct election by universal suffrage of the Chief Executive in 2015. But she then makes a very major error in completely ignoring the extensive foreign interference in Hong Kong internal affairs and the deep linkages of what she refers to as the “pan-Democrats” with US and other foreign interests; the same when she refers to the Tiananmen protests.

PE—I am not a religious man, but it has always seemed to me that Jesus’ message had great application in life, where those who elect to fight great power must expect hard treatment from it.

The Empire has always used nefarious men and means to break its critics but under Trump there has been a proliferation of an extremely noxious type of prick against whom one has to kick.

Vice President J.D. Vance is one. A man of malleable principles and acolyte of Peter Thiel who, having vilified the Imperial Boob later kowtowed to him to buy advancement. A slick sycophant, he uses his polished frat boy style to cover his contempt for the underclass, his lust for money, and for ruling class prestige.

MW—Trump continues to gaslight the American public—or tries to—regarding how he’s going from one victory to the next against Iran. I’m genuinely curious whether he believes this line about how ‘Iran will collapse after the midterms, so just vote for me,’ or whether he’s simply cynically attempting to jawbone the price of oil down a bit to somehow sneak past the midterms. And then try to figure out some sort of exit. As John Mearsheimer is fond of saying, the MOU was a surrender document that Trump signed, but now he’s trying to back out of it—but Iran keeps insisting on its terms. Which shows that Trump’s word is worthless—not worth the paper he signs. Like Mearsheimer I’m deeply skeptical of the escalation-after-the-midterms narrative

D.O.—The deep state is defined as a fluid, spontaneous network of elite stakeholders across intelligence, military, finance, and lobbying sectors. It is not an organized secret society but a dynamic system that preserves its own influence and interests (2:14-2:57).
Lack of Ideology: The system is described as being inherently pragmatic, using ideologies like socialism or capitalism merely as tools to perpetuate its own existence and homeostatic equilibrium (22:15-23:01).
The US Case Study: The speaker uses the United States as a primary example, highlighting mechanisms like lobbying, “dark money” in politics, and private military contracting as perfectly legal—yet deeply corrupt—ways the deep state exerts influence and shapes domestic and foreign policy.

SIMPLI—Good ol’ Western rags and their 4-dimensional meta-logic. Ukraine is both suffering the lion’s share of losses and destruction, but somehow winning. Russia is both losing and has no men to ply a “deadlocked” battlefield, yet is ready to invade Europe from every direction with an unstoppable phantom army.

Also, if Putin’s “stuck army” is being contained and slaughtered piecemeal in Ukraine, wouldn’t a ceasefire be the most dangerous possible outcome, as it would free his “stuck soldiers” to come invade Europe? Yet it is the Europeans who are desperate to freeze the “already stuck” Russian Army along the current line of contact, and free it to potentially march elsewhere.

Things that make you go hmm. (If your IQ’s higher than your diastolic pressure, that is.)

Virtually none of the logic out of the dim-witted Euro-circus can any longer even pass the sanity test.

It truly is the case, that the circus has left but the clowns stayed behind.

EA—Trump has violated US law by waging war without Congressional Authorization. He has threatened annihilation of a country and its people. From a psychological point of view, this is deranged. From a legal point of view, it violates the basic principles of the UN charter. Waging or even threatening war is illegal under international law, and by extension, since the US is part of the UN Treaty, it violates US law.
Why has no one in Congress, the Senate or any visible political leader condemned it and called for impeachment or at minimum, removal from office under the 25th Amendment?