The Chinese Art of War: Workers Day But Communism works in Theory Only

Vaclav Havel even when in jail never lost his theatre of the absurd sense of humour or good sleep - Lions don’t lose sleep over the opinions of sheep

Just so you knoe …

YouTube Removing All Videos That Don't Begin With The Chinese National Anthem | The Babylon Bee.

ONE HUNDRED MILLION CORPSES — AND COUNTING: Tomorrow is Victims of Communism Day.

Communism doesn’t just kill. It psychologically scars entire nations for years and years after the Communists have finally been deposed.

Communist Party's Two Sessions to go ahead, reflecting China's confidence over coronavirus

The Chinese Communist Party will open its annual congress next month after postponing the event for a number of weeks due to the coronavirus epidemic.

Fear is an opportunity for tyranny

The Chinese Art of War

'Take a chill pill': Andrew Forrest defends inviting Chinese consul-general to Greg Hunt press conference - SBS

Andrew Forrest mines his own diplomatic lode with China
COVIDSafe app: AWS using Chinese-owned data centre in Sydney, says Husic 

Analysis: In diplomatic terms, China just lobbed a small hand grenade at Australia

An extraordinary diplomatic dispute between Australia and China over the COVID-19 outbreak lays bare the fragility of the relationship, with a testy phone call this week pushing relations to a low ebb, writes Stephen Dziedzic

Military leaders warn we must prepare for a crisis worse than COVID-19

A confidential report commissioned by the Department of Defence predicted medical shortages, panic-buying and mass job losses a year before the COVID-19 outbreak.

COLD WAR II: The Strange Story of a Las Vegas Radio Station Co-Opted by China. “Las Vegas Public Radio, the ‘People’s Voice of Las Vegas,’ is a registered lobbyist for Chinese tech giant Huawei.”

~ Lou on PRC’s Mouthpiece of Las Vegas.

 Australia to China: Don’t Push Us on COVID-19, Mate.

Okay, okay, fine. If you want to get all nitpicky, COVID-19 isn’t the Chinese virus. It’s merely the latest Chinese virus. Any number of deadly pandemics have emanated from China for thousands of years, and it will keep on happening as long as the Chinese allow it to happen. But you’re not supposed to say that, because China is full of Chinese people and therefore criticizing them is racist. You’re supposed to ignore facts. You mustn’t tell the truth about why you’re out of a job and worried about getting sick and dying. If you do, your moral, ethical, and intellectual betters will call you names, which they will also do for any other reason.

But not everyone is cowed by China. Not our friends down under, certainly.

And neither should we be. China is weak and vulnerable. That’s why they’re blustering, and it’s why we should tell the truth, and put the boot in.

Jim Treacher certainly does here:

China is pulling a neat trick here:

Unleash deadly plague on the world

Lie about it, destroy evidence, and silence whistleblowers

Threaten to boycott anybody who correctly blames you for hundreds of thousands of deaths and global economic ruin

And why not? Why wouldn’t they keep doing what they’re doing? China’s friends in the “American” press are more than happy to help. They pass along the Chinese government’s lies without any hint of skepticism, and try to shame anyone who doesn’t happily whistle the same tune as we’re marched to the abbatoir. Maybe these “journalists” have been bought off. Maybe they’ve been coerced. Maybe they just hate America. Maybe it’s all three. Whatever the case, they don’t care about their audience. They work for China now.

AIR TRAVEL AND COMMUNICABLE DISEASES: Comprehensive Federal Plan Needed for U.S. Aviation System’s Preparedness GAO-16-127: Published: Dec 16, 2015. Publicly Released: Dec 16, 2015. “All of the 14 airports and 3 airlines GAO reviewed have plans for responding to communicable disease threats from abroad, although the United States lacks a comprehensive national aviation-preparedness plan aimed at preventing and containing the spread of diseases through air travel. U.S. airports and airlines are not required to have individual preparedness plans, and no federal agency tracks which airports and airlines have them. Consequently, it is not clear the extent to which all U.S. airports and airlines have such plans. The plans GAO reviewed generally addressed the high-level components that GAO identified as common among applicable federal and international guidance, such as establishment of an incident command center and activation triggers for a response. GAO identified these components to provide a basis for assessing the breadth of the plans. The plans GAO reviewed for each airport were developed by, or in collaboration with, relevant airport stakeholders, such as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) airport staff. As provided in Annex 9, the Chicago Convention, an international aviation treaty to which the United States is a signatory, obligates member states to develop a national aviation-preparedness plan for communicable disease outbreaks. The Department of Transportation (DOT) and CDC officials contend that some elements of such a plan already exist, including plans at individual airports. However, FAA has reported that individual airport plans are often intended to handle one or two flights with arriving passengers, rather than an epidemic, which may require involvement from multiple airports on a national level. Most importantly, a national aviation-preparedness plan would provide airports and airlines with an adaptable and scalable framework with which to align their individual plans—to help ensure that individual airport and airline plans work in accordance with one another. DOT and CDC officials agree that a national plan could add value. Such a plan would provide a mechanism for the public-health and aviation sectors to coordinate to more effectively prevent and control a communicable disease threat while minimizing unnecessary disruptions to the national aviation system…”

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Frank Ramsey died at age 26, in 1930. Yet intellectuals still encounter "the Ramsey effect" — you reach a breakthrough, only to realize he got there first Tacey Effect 

Frank G. Colella (Pace), D.C. Circuit Affirms IRS Authority to Require Practitioner Tax Id Numbers & Impose a User Fee: Montrois v. United States, 20 Hous. Bus. & Tax L.J. 56 (2020):

In the last five years, the D.C. Circuit has considered multiple cases regarding the scope of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)’s power to regulate tax return preparers. In the most recent case, Montrois v. United States, the court held that the IRS has statutory authority to require tax return preparers to obtain a “practitioner tax identification number” (PTIN) as a prerequisite to the commercial preparation of tax returns. The holding also stated that the IRS could charge a user fee for the PTIN. In essence, Montrois justifies a licensing fee for a regulatory scheme that the very same court had previously held could not be implemented by the IRS.

Michael A. Livingston (Rutgers), Tax and Culture: Convergence, Divergence, and the Future of Tax Law (Cambridge University Press 2020):

Tax scholars traditionally emphasize economics and assume that all tax systems can be evaluated in more or less the same way. By applying the insights of anthropology, sociology, and other social sciences, Michael A. Livingston demonstrates that tax systems frequently pursue different values and that the convergence of tax systems is frequently overstated. In Tax and Culture, he applies these insights to specific countries, such as China and India, and specific tax issues, including progressivity, tax avoidance, and the emerging area of environmental taxation. Livingston concludes that the concept of a global tax culture is, in many cases, merely a reflection of Western hegemony, and is unlikely to survive the changes implicit in the rise of non-Western nations and cultures.

(So unless you've personally lived through a wide range of circumstances and made a wide range of corresponding mistakes, you're unlikely to have acquired the knowledge necessary to navigate a diversity of situations without blundering. via The Splintered Mind )

Using data from the Correlates of War Project and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, this bar chart race shows the annual military spending of the world’s top spending countries from the start of WWI in 1914 to 2018. See also military spending info from Our World in Data.

Supreme Court rules Georgia can’t put the law behind a paywall Ars Technica 

SHERIFFS HAVE DISCRETION, TOO, AND IT’S GOING VIRAL: “If you elect a sheriff, they get to play the independent mandate “I’m a check against tyranny” card like every other elected government officeholder. And some are.”

Craving coronavirus news, but not all the time

Sometimes you have to do something other than watch the news. In this photo, a Texas woman and her son go fishing. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

ABC’s “World News Tonight” has become the No. 1 show in America. Fox News just had its best month ever in primetime. “Morning Joe” just had its best ratings ever. The Sunday morning shows are attracting more viewers than they have in years. Local TV news ratings are up. Traffic for many newspapers and digital outlets has gone up considerably. Even subscriptions for news online have risen.

People are craving news, most of which has something to do with the coronavirus. But … 

They need a break from it, too.

The latest poll from Pew Research Center shows that 71% of Americans say they need to take breaks from news about the coronavirus, and 43% say the news leaves them feeling worse emotionally.

The odd takeaway: Audiences can’t get enough coronavirus news until, well, it becomes too much. Then they can’t take it anymore. At least for a while.

These numbers are not surprising. The stress of the coronavirus — the restlessness felt from staying indoors, the fear of getting sick, the grief of losing a loved one, the anxiety about the economy and jobs — continues to take a heavy toll.

Audiences want to know as much information as they can: the latest number of cases and deaths, projections for the immediate future, reports on when life might return to normal (or whatever the new normal is going to look like). 

But there does come a point — even for those of us who report on these matters — when you have to take a break to binge-watch a show on Netflix or read a book or crank up music videos on YouTube or go for a walk or do anything besides look at more news. One Poynter Report reader even told me she has trouble watching her favorite late-night talk shows because they talk about coronavirus news or show clips from President Donald Trump’s press conferences.

But this is where the news outlets cannot let it up. The Pew numbers should not be the media’s cue to cut back on coronavirus coverage. The press’ job is to keep accurate information coming — as much of it as it can and as fast as it can.

If audiences want to step away from time to time for their own sanity, they should. But the media needs to keep being there. All the time.

Since when is it a crime to report a crime? Bernard Collaery exposes the Timor Sea betrayal

by Callum Foote

With the release of his book, Oil Under Troubled Water, to coincide with Witness K's closed court plea hearing this month, ACT lawyer, Bernard Collaery, has raised the stakes on who the real wrong-doers are in this unedifying story of how the Howard Government defied international law to spy on it's cash-strapped neighbour to profit from oil in the Timor Sea. Callum Foote reports.

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